Well, the Bennett family’s annual trip to the land of the rising sun is over again. Coming back to Brighton on the bus always reminds me how vibrantly green England is, pretty much all year round. This lead me on to think about other things I miss about England. It pretty much comes down to sausages and cheese. Those and the ability to communicate with people with a better vocabulary than my 2 year old daughter. However, sausages can be imported and my Japanese is 5x better than when I left. I think I could do with the lush rolling hills of England if I get out into the mountains, bamboo groves and moss gardens every once in a while.
As you may know from if you read my last post, we’ve been thinking about a move over there and this trip was, in part, to suss out the viability of doing that. We took a trip over to Kyoto, where we’d ideally like to live, for that reason and also to check out the cherry blossoms, which at this time of year are full on gorgeousness. Whilst there I picked up a property paper and with the help of my good lady wife perused what was on offer.
What I mostly learnt was this:
Renting in Japan is ridiculously expensive. Not (necessarily) because of the actual rent, but because deposits seem to be at least 3 months rent, a month goes to the estate agent and then there is ‘key money’ which is essentially a gift to the landlord. In some cases this was about Â¥500,000 – roughly £3000 in today’s money. Seems like an awfully big gift to me!
So, a little disheartened I decided to check out the properties to buy. I was pretty surprised by what I found. I’d heard tales that the building standards in Japan were very low, with the average age of properties being ~15 years and anything about 30 years old falling apart(compared to the UK, where the average is 120-150 years!) but I didn’t realise how much this affected property prices. New houses were comparable to the UK, at about Â¥30,000,000 or roughly £200,000. However, looking at older buildings showed how quickly house prices depreciated. 1 property I found, built in 1961, cost just Â¥4,000,000 – that works out at just under £27,000, even with the weak pound! Admittedly it was tiny and had no outdoor space (except the toilet!) but even then, the land itself would surely be worth more than that?
From speaking to a few people, it seems that the housing market is very different to that in the UK, with very little upkeep of buildings. There is definitely not the DIY minded approach that there is here in the UK. The Japanese would rather demolish and rebuild than repair or modify. How much of this is due to the constant threat of earthquakes, the wooden construction of most small houses or the constant need of the Japanese to have the latest and best, I don’t know. We worked out that if we lived in a house of less than Â¥10,000,000 (£67,000) for about 5 years, it would be cheaper than renting and would offer at least some return on investment. Add to that the possibility of getting a fixer upper at a bargain price it would seem to be the way forward. Of course, even that amount of money is still a considerable chunk, so I’m going to investigate further but it’s good to know there is a way forward!
