Buying & Building a House in Japan

This week I was disappointed for the first time since the start of building our log house. We had a meeting on Saturday October, 4th in Akita with the builders. The meeting was to discuss where the house would be placed on the property, and the colors we wanted the house.

House placement sketch

I had done a lot of preparation when deciding on the location. The lot is very big for Japan standards. My plan is to have a half circle drive way so you can drive in one way and straight out on the other side. The house is 15 meters from the road almost centered  with about 9 meters on each side. That gives me enough room to put a 2 car garage on the left. I also plan to build my companies building in to the right and front of my house (8m x 8m) that will leave enough room for 4 cars to park beside it in front of my house plus my own in the garage.

We had to pay a little more to have the house 15 meters back. When you build a house they allow up to 8 meters of waste water plumbing from the source, which is usually the road. You need to pay about 20,000 yen per meter there after. But since I wanted to put my work in front and have some extra parking. In the long run it didn’t seem so expensive.

Now on to the disappointment. Everything so far has been moving pretty quickly. We have the land, the layout of the house is 95% decided after some modifications. We just finished deciding where the house will be placed. Now let me remind you everything up to now has been 2D drawings and sketch’s.

They asked us what color we want the house, the flashing the window trims. They only had small wood samples. I am no decorator just don’t have an imagination. I was hoping they would have some kind of software or pictures of other houses with the different colors. They had nothing so my wife and I had to blindly think up what colors the house will be. Even now I have no real idea if it will look nice…Lets hope so.

We decided on the blue stain which you can see in the header of this page. We also decided on the light wood stain which you can also see in the picture, which will be used on all other parts of the house the flashing, around windows etc. The windows themselves turned out not to be the wood windows that were on all the sample houses, and images in the pamphlets. I don’t still don’t know they look like ethier. The contractor suggested black. Since they only cam in 4 colors (Black, White, Beige, and Silver) we agreed with the choice of black.

Well the last few weeks have been the most stressful. One of the most difficult decisions I have had to make was choosing the land. As you might know in Japan most people are content with plots the size of the house and maybe a parking space for the car. That is absolutely not what I envisioned for my log house. Day after day I was looking for land, the realtor kept showing us places that were tiny in my mind but apparently they were quite large in terms of the norm. The city we live in is quite small so I ended up driving almost every road within our town doing my own search. I found many hidden gems tucked away. Although after hearing the price of most of them I was really starting to get worried. I just didn’t want to “settle” for this or that one. The clock was ticking as we had to decide by October 1st due to winter and other reasons. That gave us 1 week left. I finally found two plots which were good but both had a negative. One was near an overhead high voltage line, the other in an area that we were not too fond of but it was a nice property.

Then I got a call from my realtor he found a large property right in the middle of the city I couldn’t believe it! I had looked at this exact place a year ago and thought it would be perfect. Since there were no signs up saying it was for sale and the location I never even bothered mentioning it to my realtor. It also didn’t look like anyone would ever sell it.

It turns out that my realtor found it was being auctioned by the courts. This was great news and terrible news at the same time. The great news is that it is available, and it being auctioned through the courts a very good price (maybe).

The court lists properties and everyone can put in a hidden bid. The person who bids the most takes the property. This is a great way to find cheap land and houses. One thing to note is that most of the people bidding are real estate agencies, or developers with lots of money to toss around for investments and holding properties.

Back to the stress in my life. The land we found the auction had already ended. So what happens now I asked? Well if no one places a bid then at the first of the month you can go to the court and pay the deposit amount of the starting bid…and it’s yours. Well if your first that is. To me it felt more like gambling! Well it turned out no one did bid on…WHY!!! It was an amazing property. My realtor said we have about a 30% chance of no one bidding. Well no one did so… now the 1 week wait to pay the deposit this gives those who were thinking about bidding but who didn’t a second chance to get the land. It is first come first serve at 8:30am on the first of the month. Now if you have ever been to one of those sale days at one of those electronic stores in Japan where they have dvd players for 30% off well the line ups are pretty big. Now add the fact that instead of a dvd player we are lining up for a 50,000-100,000 property wow the stress develops.

Well I lost a lot of sleep that week. But in the end we were the only ones waiting at the court entrance at 7:00am for the 8:30 opening at 8:30 we were still the only ones lol. All that stress for nothing well. With with over $15,000 in pocket ready to pay the deposit we got the property YAY!

Oh did I forget to mention that you have to pay the deposit in cash in Japan…crazy! That’s stressful enough standing around with over 10k in your pocket!

Well the search for land ends! Now I need to choose a location for the house on the property and choose some colors!

This is my story about the adventures and trials of buying and building a house in Japan. More specifically a log house in Japan. A lot of people asking questions about buying houses in Japan but very few people are giving the answers. I hope this website can answer your questions about buying and building a house in Japan. As well as give you a clear picture of what it is like to build a house in Japan.

Since I have never found the answers myself I will through trial and error let you know. Let the adventure begin!