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April 30, 2024
 

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HOME TRUTHS

Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Apr 2, 2013
When remodeling isn't quite a home improvement
A year ago we looked at a 20-year-old apartment after it had just gone on sale in the city where we live, which is about an hour from Tokyo. It was large and sunny, but the walls needed to be re-papered and the floors replaced. The realtor told us that the ¥11.6 million asking price included the cost of remodeling, which would be carried out by a company already chosen by the owner, once a sales contract was signed. We said we preferred having the remodeling done to our own specifications and asked how much cheaper the apartment would be if we bought it in its present state. She checked with the owner and called us back: He'd knock off ¥600,000.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Mar 5, 2013
Buying property in the age of Abenomics
According to most business media, now is the time to act if you are thinking about buying a home. Though the Liberal Democratic Party has yet to confirm that it will go ahead with the consumption tax increases the Democratic Party of Japan passed last year, it seems likely that the first hike to 8 percent will go through as planned in April 2014. The prediction is that people will try to buy homes before the consumption tax goes into effect and interest rates rise as a response to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's effort to boost inflation. Because the consumption tax — which applies to new homes but not to land — is levied when the buyer takes possession of the property, experts are expecting a rush on new homes by the end of the summer.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Feb 4, 2013
Building your home can come at quite a cost
People in the market for new single-family houses usually don't worry as much about the land those houses occupy because they tend to work with developers, who purchase huge tracts and then subdivide them. The customer buys the land and the house as a package, though the authorities see it as two purchases and assess property taxes accordingly. In such transactions, either the new house is already on the property or the customer is obligated to buy a model from the developer or a partner and have it built on the land.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jan 1, 2013
Checking out the real estate agents
Several months ago we looked at a house that had been bought at auction by a housing company, fixed up and then put on the market. We found it among the listings on the home page of a realtor we've dealt with in the past, and he agreed to show it to us.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Dec 4, 2012
Japan's part-time landlords are overestimating single-tenant needs
In an effort to cut costs, electronics maker Sharp has announced that it is transferring its struggling liquid crystal display business from factories in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, to factories in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. In 2004, the Kameyama facility started making large LCD screens for TVs and more workers were hired. Sales of TVs have since plunged, and as of March the number of Kameyama employees had been cut by 30 percent. The move to Sakai will reduce the number even more. This loss has been devastating to the city, whose government subsidized the factories to the tune of ¥13.5 billion. The real estate market has suffered as a result. Sharp employed contract workers and did not build housing for them, so developers convinced landowners in the city to build rental units with promises of big profits. Now most of these one-room apartments are vacant and the landlords still have 20-plus years left to pay off their mortgages.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Dec 4, 2012
Japan's part-time landowners are overestimating single-tenant needs
In an effort to cut costs, electronics maker Sharp has announced that it is transferring its struggling liquid crystal display business from factories in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, to factories in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. In 2004, the Kameyama facility started making large LCD screens for TVs and more workers were hired. Sales of TVs have since plunged, and as of March the number of Kameyama employees had been cut by 30 percent. The move to Sakai will reduce the number even more. This loss has been devastating to the city, whose government subsidized the factories to the tune of ¥13.5 billion. The real estate market has suffered as a result. Sharp employed contract workers and did not build housing for them, so developers convinced landowners in the city to build rental units with promises of big profits. Now most of these one-room apartments are vacant and the landlords still have 20-plus years left to pay off their mortgages.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Nov 6, 2012
Danchi housing lets you think outside the usual box
Japanese housing experts have a list of casual terms to describe the layouts of apartments and condominiums: kamaboko (fish paste), yokan-giri (sliced bean jelly), ta no ji (rice paddy ideograph) and chocolate bars. What these terms have in common is geometrical utility. All are rectangles that can be easily divided into smaller rectangles, thus conveying the floor plan of a collective housing unit, which is usually a big box cut up into smaller boxes. There's nothing wrong with stressing efficient use of space, but in this case efficiency is more for the benefit of the developer or landlord than it is for the buyer or tenant. You can get more units out of a given chunk of air if that air is neatly carved up into boxes, every centimeter of which can be monetized regardless of its effect on other factors that give value to a residence.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Oct 2, 2012
Second homes may be cheap, but they are often in disrepair
Atami The ad said the property was 2 km from Ajiro Station on the Ito Line, but it was difficult to tell how far we were traveling in the agent's car. Most of the trip was up a steep, winding road into the hills above Atami on the Izu Peninsula, an area developed in the 1970s by the Tokyu Corporation for bessō, or second homes. The realtor talked the whole way.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Aug 7, 2012
The size of your dog could depend on your landlord
A 53-year-old woman was recently arrested after she moved out of a 50-sq.-meter rental apartment in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, leaving behind 26 dogs. She hadn't paid her rent for some time and went missing in early June. By the time someone entered her apartment on July 3, one of the dogs was already dead. She was later found in a rented house with five dogs.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jul 3, 2012
Dip into the history of the Japanese 'system bath'
Japanese people love their evening bath, but tubs in private residences are a relatively recent development. By 1963, only 60 percent of Japanese homes had them. The small amount of living space necessitated by economic reality, not to mention the paucity of indoor plumbing, couldn't accommodate bathrooms, and the sentō, or public bath, provided enough daily luxury with its large communal facilities. But as workers became more affluent and construction of new dwellings continued apace, even renters starting demanding their own bathtubs and toilets.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jun 5, 2012
At times, there's no getting away from the neighbors
The house we were inspecting in Shiroi, Chiba Prefecture, looked better and larger in the photos that the realtor had posted on its website. Those pictures had been taken with a wide angle lens at the eastern side of the house, which bordered a leafy promenade. To the north and south of the house, however, stood more houses — only a meter or so away on either side.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
May 1, 2012
Who you buy a home from can make a big difference in price
We met the real estate agent at Honda Station on the Sotobo Line in Chiba Prefecture. As we drove to the property we talked about the area. Though a typically cramped Japanese bedroom community, it's a bit older than most, so the houses were more varied in shape and size, with wider spaces between them, not to mention the extra public park space.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Apr 3, 2012
Little houses crammed in a big city
The neighborhood of Minami Senju in Tokyo's Arakawa Ward is serviced by three train lines that provide easy, quick access to all parts of the city and beyond. East of these lines is an area called Shioiri, highlighted by a relatively new urban development complex centered around high-rise condominiums and rental apartments. To the west is a cramped maze of narrow, winding alleys lined with small wooden structures. Though surrounding areas are undergoing change in the usual makeshift Tokyo fashion, this patch of shitamachi, the "low town," remains much the same as it has been since the end of World War II — a mish-mash of small businesses and residences oblivious to zoning or any other notion of city planning.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Mar 6, 2012
Don't judge a house by its exterior
The house stood out among its neighbors: not because of its box shape or the tall ham-radio tower planted in the parking space, but because of its bold two-tone exterior of wine red interrupted by sections of gray. The company that built it keeps costs down by not erecting model homes, so the salesman brought us to the recently finished building in central Chiba Prefecture, which was already occupied. The young couple were happy to show off their new purchase, and while the all-wood interior was the construction's main selling point, it was the outside that made the biggest impression. Looking closer, we discovered it was corrugated metal.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jan 3, 2012
The rise and fall of property taxes
There are many incentives for buying a home. One of them is to simply get out of paying rent — but that isn't to say that once you own your residence there aren't costs that have to be paid on a regular basis.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Dec 6, 2011
If you can't afford the land, why not just buy the house?
The real estate agent picked us up in a company car at Takayanagi Station in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, about an hour and 15 minutes commuting time north of central Tokyo. The car had long scratches on the side, probably incurred during attempts to park in unfamiliar spaces, and we drove to the property through dense suburban sprawl overseen by towering pylons and interrupted by small plots of farmland.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Nov 1, 2011
Japan's 'new towns' are finally getting too old
In September, real estate developer Tokyo Tatemono started to demolish the Suwa Ni-chome apartments in the western Tokyo region of Tama. The Suwa danchi (housing development) was an integral part of Tama New Town, which opened in 1971. Of the various "new towns" built in the late 1960s and '70s by the government to create integrated living-working communities on the outskirts of major cities, Tama's was the most celebrated. News footage of families moving into the 50 sq.-meter apartments, which sold for about ¥5 million, are used whenever a TV show wants to illustrate Japan's postwar re-emergence as a developed country.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Oct 4, 2011
Buying a brand new home: cookie cutter or order made?
We went for the six-pack of beer, which the manufactured-housing company was giving away to the first 10 people who came to inspect its new model homes. Competition is fierce among Japan's many manufactured home builders, and the one we were visiting is No. 10 in terms of units sold per year, though given the amount of promotion and advertising they do — SMAP heartthrob Takuya Kimura is their mascot — it would be easy to believe they were closer to the top.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Aug 2, 2011
Once settled in, chances are you'll have to pay to stay
In 1946, Japan was in ruins. The housing shortage was severe and inflation was high, so the government issued a directive to freeze rental fees. To make up for the perceived loss of income, property owners came up with supplemental fees — renewal fees, called koshinryō, and "gift money" or reikin, a mandatory gratuity that new renters paid to landlords for the privilege of moving in.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jul 5, 2011
Your dream home could become a quake nightmare
Like other people in the Tokyo metropolitan area who were living in a high-rise when the March 11 earthquake struck, we subsequently decided to move.
When will Japan intervene to support the yen?
Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki has reiterated the government's readiness to take an appropriate action as the yen continues to slide against the U.S. dollar.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
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Yen rebounds strongly after first slide past ¥160 since 1990
The yen dropped to ¥160.245 per dollar on Monday before heading into the other direction to ¥155.01 amid speculation of an intervention by Japanese currency authorities.
JAL cancels international flight after captain gets drunk at Dallas hotel
A Japan Airlines' flight from Dallas to Tokyo was canceled last week after its captain got drunk at a local hotel.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.

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