On September 19, we moved house. We still haven’t said goodbye completely to the Kamiooka Rental House; we do that today when we go back to find out how much of our 180,000 yen deposit we get back. But more on that in a later entry. In the days before we moved, we told …
Tag Archive: house hunting
Jul 04
The Decision
So, I’m back from the first leg of my tour to Canada, and my wife has been busy while I’ve been gone. She’s hired SANWA to build the window grille to keep any kids from dropping out of our second floor window. She’s hired a landscaping company to turn the garden at the Kamiooka Tea …
Jun 06
Kamiooka Death Trap
I’m sitting in the new house with my wife and a rep from Yokohama city, who is just completing his inspection of the house for an earthquake evaluation. I am changing the name of this house from the Kamiooka Tea House to the Kamiooka Death Trap. We didn’t pass a single part of the …
Jun 02
The Rose Rides Again
At the closing yesterday, Friendly informed us that the rose bush had been returned. However, it is not in the condition depicted in the photo above. As I wrote before, the neighbour across the street had taken it, and in the process had cut off all the branches, leaving only two thorny stems …
Jun 01
I Own A House Now
This morning my wife took the day off and we headed down to the bank for the settlement. (I didn’t have to take a day off—one of the great advantages of working irregular hours out of the house.) We stopped in at a Starbucks an hour before we were due and met with a …
May 31
CONCEPT Returns
So yesterday, after our deflation from the Sumitomo visit on Saturday (after reading the online reviews of the company), we received CONCEPT again at the Kamiooka Tea House. We took our rep (damned if I can remember his name—it’s Yoshikawa or something like that) upstairs to the tatami room and we all sat down …
May 31
A Saturday Morning with Sumitomo Fudosan
Sumitomo is the fourth (I think it’s the fourth) renovations company that we’ve shown the Kamiooka Tea House to. Frankly, we weren’t expecting much, because Honda-san, the rep, had been phoning non-stop, but seemed incapable of using email. When my wife finally got hold of him a week and a half ago by phone, she …
May 29
Sunday last
Wow, I’ve already got another episode to write about from today, and I still haven’t written up Sunday from last week. Sunday of last week we were supposed to be having two preliminary meetings at the Kamiooka Tea House with two new renovation companies. We met the rep of the first company, SXL …
May 26
Saturday
We went to the Kamiooka Tea House on Saturday to meet with one of the renovation company reps who had visited last weekend and was now giving us her quotation. It was nearly a million yen higher than the one we got before from Mitsui’s renovation company. Of course, we’ve added a few things that …
May 23
Toaster
Busy weekend at the house so far. More on that later. I snapped a photo of the vintage toaster I mentioned last week, so I thought I’d post it.
May 21
Mortgage Signing
I was 30 minutes late for the mortgage signing. The document panic had killed the wiggle room I’d left myself for travelling time, and I got to Tameike-Sanno station almost right at 12:30. Before realizing that the bank’s officers are located near Kamiyacho station. This is what happens when I don’t get enough …
May 21
Document Panic
So, moments before I was supposed to go out the door to head into Tokyo to sign the documents, I notice a missed call on my cell phone from the bank. I return the call, and it’s just my rep reminding me which documents to bring, none of which I have… and beyond that, none …
May 21
Mortgage Signing Today
I’m about to get ready to leave for Tokyo to sign my mortgage papers. Apparently, either the registration for the second floor has gone through, or the bank has received notice that it will go through, so I’m able to go in and take care of that. That means we can close as early …
May 18
Renovations and Treasure Hunting – Pt. 2
Right, so we went back to the Kamiooka Tea House on Sunday, this time first thing in the morning to do treasure hunting. This room, in particular, –> In case you haven’t been following this blog, the story is this: The previous inhabitant of the house died, and a lot of her …
May 17
Renovations and Treasure Hunting – Pt. 1
This weekend we were at the Kamiooka Tea House not once, but twice. We decided to get quotations from multiple renovation companies for the work we want done on the house, so on Saturday we visited the house with another renovation rep and a guy who seemed to be her head carpenter or …
May 13
Not Rocket Science: Let This Be A Lesson To Future Home-Buyers
<- This is me, pulling out my hair. More fur is flying around our house purchase. So, the second floor registration is happening. The marker check (what I originally thought was a survey) is not required for the house to change hands. BUT… the owners thought that they had until the end …
May 13
Today’s House Confusion Not A Big Deal, But Still Weird
Okay, so I spoke to Hank the banker this afternoon after all the confusion this morning, and it turns out that everything is fine, although the mortgage documents are going to be delayed while we register the second floor of the house. Not sure what’s happening with the survey, though, because it turns out …
May 12
Stress Not Over
Just got an email from the bank. They cancelled my signing of the mortgage documents on Friday because it seems they just noticed that the land is being re-surveyed and that the 2nd floor needs to be registered. They’re not saying no, but they’re delaying the signing until these items are complete. The …
May 11
A Breakdown of The House-Buying Process Online
I came across this link while looking for something else. They do give a good overview of buying property, but there is definitely information missing (e.g. dealing with foreign banks, etc.), and it’s Toyko specific. Still, it’s not bad for giving you a sense of the process. With no further ado: http://www.housingjapan.com/real-estate-tokyo/buying-guide/ …
May 10
Woo-Hoo! Our Bank is On Board!
Got a call from the bank just a few minutes ago… Our mortgage is approved! To do: collect our current bank statements and send them to the bank to prove we have the down payment amount (frustratingly, this will probably have to wait until tonight when my wife comes home) apply for …
May 06
House Hunting Blog on Facebook
I am currently attempting to have my blog automatically update to Facebook. This post is kind of a test. Also, I’m using this to announce that I’ve done my best to blog the experience of buying a house in Japan (far from finished yet). For the (very) few of you who have actually …
May 06
Oh, Some More Notes
I think I forgot to mention that one of the reasons that the Kamiooka Tea House is inexpensive is that our contract specifically limits the responsibility of the previous owners to absolutely nothing. If we turn the water on and the pipes explode, or there’s no water pressure, or the gas pipes have a …
May 06
Too Late!
If only this book had been available when we started! Now I’m paranoid that it contains information on managing risks that would have been useful to me: http://www.debito.org/?p=6636 But holy fuck, the book is around $87 U.S.D. ($659 HKD). Now, that’s not a big investment in terms of buying a house, but you’d …
Apr 30
Contract Signing – Part 2
Right, so in Part 1 I wrote about the owners of the Kamiooka Tea House and how they seemed cool, and how their real estate agent was a bit of a dingbat. After going through the contract, we started the signing. Occasionally, my wife would talk with Friendly. Friendly was the one who …
Apr 30
Documents Issue Resolved
Whew. The person filling in for our rep has intercepted the package and made sure that the contents get to the Valuer… which is good, because they were apparently required.
Apr 30
Goddamn it!
So, after signing the contract yesterday (Part 2 coming soon), we sent a copy and the remaining documents to the bank. It was a national holiday yesterday, so I waited until this morning to email our rep to let us know they were coming. I immediately get an ‘Out-of-Office’ message that says he will …
Apr 29
Contract Signing – Part 1
Today we went into the real estate office to sign the contract with the owners of the the Kamiooka Tea House. I sent a bunch of the papers to the bank in advance earlier this week, and they reported that so far there didn’t seem to be a problem and they would get started …
Apr 24
More Drama
So, the Kamiooka Tea House brings more drama… So, it turns out that the previous owner has not registered the ENTIRE SECOND FLOOR with the city. Also, it seems that they gave the wrong number for the land area because they were using very old survey data (and actually made a typo there as …
Apr 22
Good News and Bad News
Okay, the good news is that the owners of the Kamiooka Tea House have accepted our offer. The bad news is that they want to delay the contract signing date from this Saturday to next Thursday, screwing up my schedule even more. (I’m kind of set on getting everything done before I leave for …
Apr 21
Tick Tock, Tick Tock
So, we put an offer in on the Kamiooka Tea House last Sunday, and we’re waiting to hear back. Apparently there are three owners that must all be consulted, so I wonder if our contract-signing date will actually be able to be this Saturday as scheduled, or not… In the meantime, here are some …
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