Living in (or moving to) Japan

[osmoses-jones]

anyone know how much it cost to get a house in japan. i need to know because i am moving in japan hopefully after 3 year.

[kj1980]

If you have your eyes set on a metropolitan area such as Tokyo or Osaka, you'll most likely not able to afford a house - one million US dollars will buy you a hut in Setagaya-ku in the heart of Tokyo.

Opt for a single room apartment instead...Just to give you an idea, I pay close to 150,000 yen (approx. USD$1500) for a one bedroom apartment in Tokyo.

[mantidor]

talking about houses, I heard that in Japan almost no one actually owns a house, and instead they pay a monthly rent... its very odd for me considering that here having a house is the ultimate goal of a lifetime for practically everyone, most people give up everything in order to own a house, its almost imposible for people to believe that you can actually live paying rent, (even for me, although Im little bit more open minded)

[osmoses-jones]

damn i will go with 1500$ rent house then anyway i will be going there as a game designer hope there is company will accept me

[kj1980]

Originally Posted by mantidor

talking about houses, I heard that in Japan almost no one actually owns a house, and instead they pay a monthly rent... its very odd for me considering that here having a house is the ultimate goal of a lifetime for practically everyone, most people give up everything in order to own a house, its almost imposible for people to believe that you can actually live paying rent, (even for me, although Im little bit more open minded)

Perhaps you are mistaken what you refer to "rent" with "paying off loans." In the United States, its called "paying off your mortgage." You don't own the house until you've paid off that debt - until then the bank owns it.

Housing is expensive. Even in the United States, a cheap starter home in the heart of Los Angeles would cost USD$300,000. No one has that kind of money. You go to a bank, pay a down payment (usually 15-20% of the total cost of the home), and the bank gives you the rest of the money. You gradually pay off that loan with a fixed mortgage interest rate 4-10% over the course of 25 to 30 years. This is how real estate works in most first world countries. How do they work in your country?

Sure, the heart of Tokyo is expensive, but there are still suburbs in the neighboring Saitama and Chiba areas. There, you can buy a home starting from the low 30,000,000 yen to upper 50,000,000 yen range (USD$300,000 to $500,000) for a decent home. Still, that is too expensive for a person or a family to pay, so they get a loan from the bank and pay that off for the next 25 to 30 years. Or, you can sell that property if land prices go up and make a good profit margin to buy a cheaper home. Unfortunately, Japanese land prices has taken a huge beaten in the last decade and it property value has not risen for the past several years.

[kj1980]

Originally Posted by aahhsin

I'm off topic, but the title said "anyone know?"

So

Does anyone know what is Guniess World Record's email address or where I can contact them?

Did you break a world record?

Click "Contact Us" on: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/

[Hisoka2k4]

okay, thats expensive, but do the ppl in those area's earn alot too?

[LynnieS]

Define "a lot". There are still people who work a steady job and live with their parents just the same as people in the U.S. As kj1980 said, however, your location is going to matter a great deal as to how much your monthly housing costs will be, whether you rent or buy/mortgage.

I believe, from looking on-line, that if you work in Japan and get a housing allowance from your company, there are tax benefits accrued to you. I'm not certain if such payments are made by Japanese companies or if they can be applied to mortgage payments. My rent is paid by my company out of my housing allowance, for example, and my salary emcompasses both a salary and a housing allowance - with the sum equal to my annual salary back in the States.

In other words, I got no direct benefit from a purely cash point of view. Tax-wise, a bit slight ahead although I'm still responsible for filing and paying U.S. federal taxes. Other countries may not require you to do so - i.e., no taxing in both countries.

[Ending]

1400€ per month? I could almost pity you, for with that amount you could get that 300.000 together pretty quick.

But then who would want to live in middle of a metropoly? Pretty much suicidal with all that pollution and noise.

[Hisoka2k4]

Yeh i rather have a nice cheap house just outside it

[mantidor]

Originally Posted by kj1980

...
Housing is expensive. Even in the United States, a cheap starter home in the heart of Los Angeles would cost USD$300,000. No one has that kind of money. You go to a bank, pay a down payment (usually 15-20% of the total cost of the home), and the bank gives you the rest of the money. You gradually pay off that loan with a fixed mortgage interest rate 4-10% over the course of 25 to 30 years. This is how real estate works in most first world countries. How do they work in your country?
...

Thats the reason why I consider my fellow country men (from Colombia) who want to follow the "american dream" very naive, (well, not just them but any latinamerican) not just because of housing, but the price of everything in general, for us is simply way too expensive.

here a good, nice house located considerably close to the center of the city cost around 90000 dollars. The apartment I live in costed 40000 dollars, its a little small but good enough and we have a good location with respect to the city. We pay with a loan as you mentioned. This is basically for middle class people, a house above 150,000 dollars would be considered extremely high class. Rents are between 80 dollars and 370 dollars. Im sure there are 1000 dollar rents, but in the elite parts of the city, and mainly for offices, not houses.


aaww I missed ahhsin's posts

[Antonik]

Originally Posted by mantidor

Thats the reason why I consider my fellow country men (from Colombia) who want to follow the "american dream" very naive, (well, not just them but any latinamerican) not just because of housing, but the price of everything in general, for us is simply way too expensive.

here a good, nice house located considerably close to the center of the city cost around 90000 dollars. The apartment I live in costed 40000 dollars, its a little small but good enough and we have a good location with respect to the city. We pay with a loan as you mentioned. This is basically for middle class people, a house above 150,000 dollars would be considered extremely high class. Rents are between 80 dollars and 370 dollars. Im sure there are 1000 dollar rents, but in the elite parts of the city, and mainly for offices, not houses.


aaww I missed ahhsin's posts

heh in new york( All boroughs ) rent for a single bedroom apartament is 600$. Rents go really high up. And thats in brooklyn/queens/bronx...If you want to live in Manhattan you got to pay around 3,000 for a tiny apartament.

[Ben]

I was talkin bout this the other day and i was told that in Japan, everything was like, 10X more expensive...

[Sakaki]

It rather depends on where you live, and how long you plan on living there, but the thing about rent vs. owning can be that in the long run owning is more economical. In Michigan nice houses start in the $60,000 to $80,000 range (a house that in CA would run in the hundred of thousands range.) So if you are going to stay in one place for very long buying can be a better option. I recently bought a 3 bedroom house and my monthly payments are $500 for a 15 year loan. A smaller apartment would cost $450 to $600, so in 15 years I'm done making payments but rent would go on. Then also if I move a few years from now I can sell the house for more than I paid for it, but I wouldn't be able to get back any rent money from an apartment.

My house is 90 years old, my sister has a house in the same city that is over 100 years old. Which leads to the question of; I heard that new houses in Japan are not really built to last all that long and that when many people buy a house they actually are buying the property and tear down the house that is there and build a new one.

Is there any truth to that, and is it also kind of because that people do not want to live in a house where someone else has lived.

[LynnieS]

Originally Posted by Antonik

heh in new york( All boroughs ) rent for a single bedroom apartament is 600$. Rents go really high up. And thats in brooklyn/queens/bronx...If you want to live in Manhattan you got to pay around 3,000 for a tiny apartament.

Hmm. A few years ago, I was looking to rent a place having gotten a job out of college up in Inwood (north part of NYC), and for the place (a 1-bedroom large airy flat), it would cost US$1100/month. Didn't take it as the commute wouldn't be all that great.

Originally Posted by Ben

I was talkin bout this the other day and i was told that in Japan, everything was like, 10X more expensive...

Umm, relative to what? A very nice apartment in a city like Austin (TX) or Chicago (IL), both in the U.S., would go for less than its equivalent in NYC. My rent in Tokyo is less than what a comparable apartment in Manhattan.

Food costs can be really expensive relative to the U.S. prices; I came across my first 1000 yen mango recently. But coffee, I thought, wasn't too bad; having spent 5 GB pounds for a cappucino in LN, 400 yen isn't that much.

Its strength was a bit weak, however.

Back onto topic... Bring money if you're going to be renting a place. Assuming that you can find both an agent and a landlord willing to rent to a foreigner, you'll have to pay the agent's fee, the rent and deposit, and the key money to the landlord. That's about 4-5 months' worth of rent right there in one go.

[kj1980]

Originally Posted by Sakaki

I heard that new houses in Japan are not really built to last all that long and that when many people buy a house they actually are buying the property and tear down the house that is there and build a new one.

Is there any truth to that, and is it also kind of because that people do not want to live in a house where someone else has lived.

I'd assume it is the same in the United States.... You buy a house, make any adjustments and "fixer-uppers" as necessary to increase the value of your home. Say that your house is thirty years old, there are bound to be dents and cracks, the flooring might be dirty etc... A propective seller would make necessary fixers so that the realtor could sell the house into escrow, right? And I don't understand the part where "actually buying the land." Aren't the land part of the housing prices in your country? Part of the reason housing is expensive in metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and New York is the scarcity of land.

In Japan, when people buy a house, there are several things they look at (in order of importance):

A. Condition of the house, price
B. Neighbors
C. School district
D. Accessibilty to shopping centres
E. Distance from the nearest train station

I'd take it is much the same in the United States...except for the train station, they probably look at the distance to the nearest freeway ramp. Isn't it odd to buy a house that you just looked at and tear that apart? Maybe some people do. Perhaps some people do that in the United States as well. But building up a home costs money...and I doubt anyone who is buying their first home is going to spend hundred of thousands of yen to tear a home apart and build it up once again.



There are tons of wooden old 50+ year old buildings in the shitamachi (old town) areas of Tokyo as well. The house itself is dilapidated and probably worth nil...they are occupied by elderly and families who have lived there since the pre-and-post war ages. Many of these are mom-and-pop stores where the first floor is some kind of store and the actual living quarters is in the back and second floors. But they are living on land that is probably worth 1,000,000 yen (USD$10,000) per square metre. Back in the real estate boom of the 1980s, evil real estate agencies tied with sokaiyas (yakuzas) would coerce people living in such homes to sell their property. However, the elderly people who owned these homes built them from scratch after the post-war era, and they refused to sell their property that they have felt attached to for all their years.

So much like the United States, where a lonely grandma who takes care of her cats living in a hut in the middle of nowhere is actually a multi-millionaire since she bought Intel stocks at 50 cents back in the 1960s, a peaceful elderly couple in Japan living in a dilapidated old wooden hut in Tokyo are actually multi-millionaires. There have been many instances where a person finds out he is the lone surviving relative of such an elderly couple who owned a house in Tokyo...the person inherits the land and becomes instantaneously rich...only to get taxed by the government for intestate.

[Hisoka2k4]

You can always get a roommate or roommatestress that will lower the costs..

any girl looking for one? :P :P

[Lord Raiden]

kj1980, you know what's scary the most? A lot of what you're describing is true over here too. Actually, true to the point of being scary. In the town I live in, which is a small town in the middle of nowhere, land in the city fetches just rediculous amounts of cash (it's a historic town full of doctors, lawyers, politicians, and other rich folk) and houses are no younger than probubly 50 years or so. In fact, I don't think I've seen a new house built in this city in my entire lifetime. Some buildings here date back to the founding of the city. So that also accounts for the rediculous prices. Now outside the city is different. You can grab land really cheap, especially if its land from a farmer who's slowly giving up his fields one at a time or a section at a time as he's getting ready for retirement. (a lot of farmers are giving up on farming around here because the state of Michigan is just making it WAY too expensive for them and their kids don't want to have anything to do with the family farm. But that's another story entirey.)

In some areas around here you can snag a house with land for as little as $20,000 if you know where to look. So compared to the city it's a great deal. So yeah, there's a lot that is very similar to what you guys have over there.

[Kowalski]

Originally Posted by Lord Raiden

kj1980, you know what's scary the most? A lot of what you're describing is true over here too. Actually, true to the point of being scary. In the town I live in, which is a small town in the middle of nowhere, land in the city fetches just rediculous amounts of cash (it's a historic town full of doctors, lawyers, politicians, and other rich folk) and houses are no younger than probubly 50 years or so. In fact, I don't think I've seen a new house built in this city in my entire lifetime. Some buildings here date back to the founding of the city. So that also accounts for the rediculous prices. Now outside the city is different. You can grab land really cheap, especially if its land from a farmer who's slowly giving up his fields one at a time or a section at a time as he's getting ready for retirement. (a lot of farmers are giving up on farming around here because the state of Michigan is just making it WAY too expensive for them and their kids don't want to have anything to do with the family farm. But that's another story entirey.)

In some areas around here you can snag a house with land for as little as $20,000 if you know where to look. So compared to the city it's a great deal. So yeah, there's a lot that is very similar to what you guys have over there.

Obviously the rich people drives up the prices. It could be an example of what the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen spoke about, namely that because the price is high, it could be more appealing to the richer segments of the population or the upper class. The higher price brings about more status to the upper class and seperates them from the remaining population. Therefore we can conclude that cheap houses outside of the city hasn't got as much status as those in the city.

[Bandersnatch]

If you do find a job in game development, you might be able to just sleep under your desk. I saw a interview with the guy whos making the Gran Turismo games and a bunch of the staff just sleep under their desks and get back to work when they wake up, I was pretty suprised. You'd think if they were that dedicated there would be like 20 Gran Turismo's already. They had a gym and a relaxation room I think too, probably also have a kitchen or something. Shower in their sinks and your all set. Good luck trying to get laid if you live under a desk though.