House visit (exterior)

picture of house taken from inside the bordering "garden" plot which is sold with it

Stepping out, there are a lot that I wanted done, so I wanted to get estimates for all that and see which parts I can try to do myself.
But before telling the agent and the reform guy anything, they had 2 remarks which they took first.
1- The roof of the house is not sparkling new and looks just like all the other houses in the neighborhood. The reform guy offered to give me an estimate for cleaning it up and also for covering it with some material. I want to eventually get solar panels and water heater, so not sure what I will do with the roof for now.

Fake bricks, south side

2- The siding is your usual plastic fake brick nailed to the house, with rubber/gummy isolating material covering/filling along the joints. It's the common cheapest solution in Japan. It is just normal dirty, and could do with a nice hosing down. But on the south side, thanks to all the direct sunlight in 14 years, the soft gummy material has hardened and started to crack. In some spots the water proofing isolating sheet beneath is starting to show so I guess if something needs immediate attention this would be it. The reform guy started talking about various ways to fix it, from just cleaning the exterior and refilling the gummy bits, to more expensive total replacements with fancy options and various durability. I asked him to give me some estimates. Personally I am not a big fan of the plastic fake siding at all, so if I had the money I would replace it all with either wood, brick or marble...

Apart from these, what I want to do (which is a lot, so I am not going to list it all here, there are lots of DIY projects going in my head right now, like making a Japanese style garden with bonsai trees and koi in the backyard, and making a chicken coop in the far end of the garden etc) is this:
1- Fencing in the whole property. This is to be able to let the cats out without them running away or intruding in neighbor's house.
2- Putting in a wall between the house and the garden. The garden plot is actually 1-2 meters above the house plot, and the change in height is not gradual. It just goes up. There is a concrete brick wall there to keep the earth/dirt from the garden from falling into the pathway around the house. But it is just not tall enough, so dirt keeps spilling over. I want it to be a bit higher for safety and also as a margin.

East side fence between our and neighbor's house

When it comes to fencing, it is going to be a big project. The reform guy also started scratching his head when I asked him for an estimate. So I guess I have to do most of it myself. The property is already more or less fenced, except on the west side (between the garden and the neighboring woods. luckily there is no building there yet. There are some trees and some vegetable plots, and the rest is covered with grass and wild) which is a 32 meter straight line. After that, on the north it turns into the car port which has a fence and a wall tall enough. On the south, there is a fence over 2 meters high covering the whole property.

"The hilly bit" on the south. The unfenced part is seen on top left.

On the east side, there is already fence almost all the way (except for the hilly bit), but it is not tall enough for keeping the cats in. I guess I need to talk to the neighbor and get their permission to replace/extend the height. Plus I have to put in a fence on the hilly bit.

On the west, there is also one open/unfenced bit, after the carport, where the cars enter/exit. I would need a proper gate there.
So this will be my first big project. Until this is finished, the cats will have to get accustomed to the interior of the house, which is plenty spacious.

A part of the wall

For the walls, the reform guy will give me some estimates and I will decide if I will do it myself or ask him or someone else to build.

The line between the house plot and the garden plot

House visit (interior)

The day after the contract rehearsal we went to the house to check out some points first-hand.
Points like checking that the border markers are all there, to see what the different remarks in the contract meant etc. Plus having an overall look at the current shape of the house in which we would receive it. At the same time, a guy from construction/carpenter company was there to give me an estimate of how much different reforms/fixes/changes that I was thinking about would cost.

Borders could all be seen. There were some remarks about a couple of holes in bedroom walls, an indent in the flooring of the bathroom and something about a kitchen fan not working. Also a remark that there might be noise from passing train which we need to understand.


We had already seen the interior a couple of times but this time it was with different eyes as future owners and much more critical. Overall there is nothing wrong or strange with the interior, it has all the marks and dirt spots that one can expect a 14 year old house can have. So it is not that bad. We can always get new wall papers or clean up. But I think new wall papers will soon be scratched or dirtied by the cats so that's not money well spent. We should just keep to the cleaning and maybe painting part.

hole is right under the window

The hole in the bedroom are almost same size as a fist. I guess the cheapest fix is to use spackling paste myself and then either paint or tape over it, or hide it behind a piece of furniture.

The indent in the bathroom flooring looked worse though. Nothing I can fix myself. I asked the reform guy to have a look and tell me what it will cost to fix, but being the businessman he is, he started from the indent and gradually expanded the fix to removing the sink (which is nowhere near the small indent) and removing the whole floor and replacing with tiles and some fancy options, and ended up dreaming away towards getting a whole new bathroom just to fix the small indent. I had to stop him and tell him to give us the easiest cheapest version. And that would according to him mean removing just half the floor and replace with new flooring after fixing the indent underneath. A bit put off, he said as a last remark: "Or if you want it cheaper you can just leave it as it is"
I thought about it and asked him to give me a price estimate anyway.

It didn't look like a water damage, and it is not that big really. I probably will bring in a local handyman after moving in to see if he cannot give a better cheaper fix.

Inspecting the kitchen fan, it worked just fine. The guide we were with said that there appears to ba a glitch in the electronics so that the fan sometimes doesn't turn on. We tried it a few times and it seemed fine. If it gives us trouble I guess I will open it up and see if I can fix it.

As for the train sound, the tracks are 15 meters away on the south side BUT there is a big hill between us, plus the tracks themselves are on the deep other side of the hill, almost 30 meters below. So the sound is muffled and far. Plus it doesn't last long as the train passes by fast.
While we were inside, we actually heard the train pass by a couple of times. But we noticed it only because the doors and windows facing south were all open. And even then, it is nothing remarkable that one cannot get used to, unless you need a complete and total silence at all times. By the way, all the doors and windows have double glazing. So when we closed them we barely heard the train. And it is not usual that everyone in the house just stands still and listens for passing train.

Actually living near a road is much noisier. And the train doesn't run in the middle of the night. Where we live now, cars pass by all the time and it is also smokey from the cars. Everywhere we lived before in Japan, it was pretty much same with noise form cars. Even when we didn't live right next to a road. This house is actually far from the main road which is a big blessing. There are several houses between us and the road.


The reform guy told me he will also give me estimates for reforming/renewing the kitchen, renewing the tatami-room floors (which he said must be done because the color has changed due to the sun, but that room being on the south I guess it takes only 2-3 months before the sun changes the color of new tatami floors too...), replacing the hoses of the air conditioning, covering some cracks in the balcony with a layer of concrete (The cracks are nothing, just looks normal, and the fix would only be cosmetic he said), and also a total cleaning (which we can do ourselves very well). I probably won't do any of those but it is good to know what the cost would be, so I let him do the estimate.

Rehearsal of house contract

Pretty ordinary layout I guess

Last Saturday we had a rehearsal walk-through of the contract. It took 3,5 hours and I was completely finished afterward. But then I thought about how tired the agent who did the constant reading and explaining must be. All I did was just listening and asking some questions. I hope he liked the 14 y.o. single malt Scottish whiskey I bought for him. Plus I hope he gets a hefty part of the agent fee we are paying.

I think it was all pretty straight-forward. However, I still don't know when we will actually get the keys to move in. The agent said that the preliminary date would be decided on the contract day. He also explained the additional fees and costs that occurs at the purchase time. There are your usual taxes, plus the agent fee, plus the registration/ownership transfer tax, plus transfer handling fee. It all amounts to less than 9% of the cost of the house. So I am glad we had managed to negotiate the price down.

He also explained about the common properties. Apart from the two plots of land I am buying, I will also be co-owner of a tiny plot which is used for garbage collection with 7 others, and I will also be sharing ownership of a big plot of land which is used as common connecting road between us and our neighbors. On that road plot, there are also four electric posts which the electric company pays us to have there.

For the purchase and ownership transfer, there are some registration that needs to be done. But in order to get it all right, it seems some tricks are necessary. All four plots of land plus the two forest plots I already bought need to be transferred to me and, to make things simpler,  my new address. However, I have not moved yet and am not registered on the new address. In order to get the new address on my registry papers I have to purchase and transfer its ownership first. It's a chicken and egg problem.To get rid of it, I have to first go to the town hall and lie a bit and tell them that I have already moved to the new place, and get them to put the new address on my name. From past experience they don't ask too many questions, hopefully will not this time neither. After having changed my address, still not having bought the house, I can use my registration paper to get ownership of the new place... 

Hooray!

I found a home near the lands (Around 7 minutes walk), so we will be moving there next month hopefully. So for a while we will be super busy with contracts and moving and what not, but I will try to keep updating here as much as I can.

The house is 14 years old, so it is neither super new nor ancient. The price was a bit too high, but you have to consider several merits it has especially for me, which made it unique. Apart from the home and the land it is on, which is pretty OK size (160 sqm), it also includes a bigger plot of land (220 sqm) bordering it, which is ideal for making a big vegetable garden. It also has a car port which is pretty roomy. You can fit two normal size cars there. It also has a spacious backyard. It is located quite near the station (9 minutes walk), and it is near my forest plots. With proper fencing, it can become a dream house for the cats too. Living real close to the plots, I can put more focus and time on working the land. Still have lots of ideas but not sure which are best to realize...

Also it is not falling apart old, so we can just move in and start living without doing any major fixes for a long while, if we want to. Thinking about all this, and having seen the alternatives around that area and their prices, actually this house' price was not so unrealistic. Plus I really wanted it, so I figured it is best not to jeopardize losing it by biding too low. (Actually I gave a 65% bid a couple of weeks ago when I was not seriously thinking about buying it, it was before getting the forest plots, so the proximity merit was not there. That bid was turned down almost right away, basically the seller though it was ridiculously low. So this time I bid a bit higher so he would at least consider it...)

My bid this time was 80% of the price, which was initially turned down, and after a bit of back and forth negotiation, we agreed on 82% of the original price, which is quite a good bit cheaper. I might have gotten it cheaper if I took a harder stance, but as mentioned I did not want to lose it just trying to bargain for a bit lower and then regret it later.

The waiting...

...is the hardest part.
Somehow, almost as if synced, several different important decisions and events are supposed to culminate within this week.
So I am just sitting and pretty much waiting for things to happen.

Anyway, in the meantime, I did a bit more thinking about what to do with the land, and think I will start by using the east plot (which is full of bamboo right now), and let the west plot be for a while, at least until I have gotten the east plot where I want it to be.

first draft...

For the east plot, the first thing I should do is to cut down half or more of the bamboo trees on the south side. I want to keep some bamboo on the north side, both as protection and just in case I need bamboo later on. The rhizomes should be contained so the bamboo doesn't spread south again. (probably I have to dig down plastic root delimiter on its south side)
Using the cut down bamboos, I want to make a fence around the plot on the south, west and east (the black lines), and I would also love to make 1-2 vinyl houses using bamboo as frame. That way I can grow something on the south side, and still keep somewhat protected from animals and weather (and children? I assume people who live around the plot pick free bamboo shoots from the plot, but they hopefully will stop once they see someone is actually using the land). There is no well yet so I want to dedicate a bit of space to water collection.

Just my thoughts while I am waiting...

Oh and I have been thinking about bringing big nut/berry/fruit trees and plant on the west plot, as part of trying to make a permaculture mini-food forest but not sure where to get trees yet. 👦

How to land

I just realized I should maybe list what I needed in order to acquire the plots, just as reference.

Once I decided I wanted the plots, I filled in a simple application. Not that I needed to, because people were not exactly lining up for it. But I guess it is a standard thing, to inform the selling agent that I was interested and he should hold the land. In my case the seller and the agent were the same. Their real estate agent had acquired the land from some bank several years back, who in turn had got it from some public auction.

I needed to fill in the price I am willing to pay, how much down-payment I will pay, date of making contract (if the seller would agree with my price) and date for ownership registrations, money transfer etc to be completed. The price I offered was a bit less than 65% of the asking price.

My agent told me that it would probably not go through because the seller, being in the business, probably knew what price is realistic to set and I was offering way below that, which is ridiculous. Plus he personally knew the guy, and told me that he usually doesn't set prices that are negotiable.

I told him that asking is free, so let's just do it anyway and see what happens. He helped me with the dates as I didn't know how long things usually take.

In the application, there were also lots of fields related to loan and financing, which we could skip luckily as it didn't apply to this case.
After half a week, I got a call back from my agent that the seller had agreed to my price, and that we should sign the contract 1,5 weeks later. He would prepare the contract within this week, and I had a couple of things too that I wanted him to make sure and add to the contract, so we agreed to have a dry run that weekend, a week before contract signing, with only me and him.

During the practice run, he went through the contract in detail, reading everything down to the fine print and explaining it to me in layman Japanese. He also showed me that he had added my worry points about "cultural bury ground", "protected wood", "waste dump field" etc. He also had attached the official documents for any of these queries which he had found through the land registers.

For the real contract signing, I needed to being my hanko (for signing on various documents), my hanko registration paper (to prove that this in fact is my hanko), the down-payment, a document showing I had enough money in my bank to pay the whole thing, my residence information (for transfer of ownership later) and official stamp with 1000 yen value (in Japan all contracts, paperwork and receipt over a certain amount must be stamped with paper stamp to make them official. The value of stamp depends on type of contract/paper and the money it represents. In our case, land sale for a certain price equals a stamp of 1000 yen.) which I bought from the post office.

Apart from the price of land itself, other costs apply. The biggest is the handling fee to my agent (Which I think he really earned) equal to 3% of the price+60000+tax. The second biggest is ownership transfer fee. There were a couple minor other fees and taxes too but in comparison they were low.

On the big day, I met with the seller finally. And we sat and went through the contracts, and then signed, stamped (The seller had brought his own 1000 yen paper stamp.) two sets of contracts and put our hanko (hanko on the paper stamp, hanko under signature, and hanko on the back where the contract paper is binded), he took one and I took one contract.

Apart from contracts, we also got lots of attachments (I think 10 in all) which were mentioned in the main contract. Those are maps, official papers, history/registration certificates, measurements, papers for my worry points above, "document of important matters" etc. I am still reading them.

In a couple of weeks from now, we will meet at my bank and complete the transaction. They give me the ownership and I give them the money.

Got-land

Pun!

So, now the contracts are signed and stamped. Money will be transferred in a couple of weeks.
Next is the real big challenge: I have to find a place nearby to move to, which I can afford.
Let the hunt begin.

Risk

Very interesting situation when it comes to the plot I am buying. It makes me feel I will be playing Risk for some time, at least if I want to have a land that is one piece...

The green plots are mine. The others are registered as farmland and can as of yet not be purchased by me. To buy them, either I have to become a registered farmer or the plots need to change to forest or something else. Even then, I am not sure if they are for sale or not. Probably if I offer the owner a higher price than the norm, they will agree to sell. But at the moment even if I had the money I would be blocked by the land type designation.

The yellow plots actually look like farm fields. They are kept clean by the owners, however there is nothing being planted... The red plot looks much less well-groomed. It is quite overgrown with weeds and lots of different trees. The yellow plot on the west and the red plot are owned by the same person. The east side yellow plot is owned by a guy who lets his sister and her family cut the grass and keep clean.

One of the rules for changing designation of a land from farm to forest is that the land must look like a forest. There should be dozens of trees etc. In that sense, only the red plot is a candidate for me to purchase, which fulfills my need for a one-piece land.

The surrounding brown areas are all thick forest with lots of old trees and green. On south, the forest kind of intrudes the tiny road. There is only 1 way to enter the premises through public road, and that is from east (the road turns into private road further to the west, so entry is not possible without special permission...).
That should not be any problem, except the part painted with cyan consists of a dangerous-looking down-slope with some branches and roots, which is not car friendly at all, and there is no proper place to park near it. Either I have to fix it, together with the owner of the plot immediately to its north (The sister of owner + family), or I have to talk with the owner of the private road to the west and get their permission to drive in.
I have not met the road owner, their house is adjacent to the road though. I have seen the east plot's owner's sister just briefly when we were checking the land the first time, and said hi.
Let's see how things turn out. For the time being I don't even have a car ☺

So, my short time plans are to find and talk to the owner of the red plot about taking over his land. And get permission to use the private road from its owner.
Yesterday I was at the ward office and took out the registry papers of the red and yellow plots. There is a lot of info there and helps me get in touch with the owner too.

Golden week

OK, so the owner was away during golden week so he was not there to sign contracts and stuff. Instead we got to do a dry run with the real estate agent where he read aloud through the fine print of the contract and explained the difficult parts. Real useful actually. So next week when the owner is there too, hopefully the signing will go smoothly.
After the signing, some practical preparation needs to be done and then I will be able to do what I want from mid-June.
In the meantime, I can look for a residence nearby...

History

Here are more pictures from the land.

2011

2012

2014

2015

Forest bump

Finally I get to use my hanko.
In a couple of weeks I will be signing the contract for a couple of forest plots.
The plots are very close to each other, one is ca.1100 m² and the other is ca.700 m²
Good size for a start I guess. Both seem to have been forests at least in the last 14 years...
Here are some history pictures from google earth, with the plots marked.

From 2003

From 2004

From 2005

Looks like pretty much the same trees have been there for a while, which is good news.