You buy a house in Otaru. You fly home. The house sits. This is the reality for a significant number of foreign buyers in Japan. Maybe you bought with a five-year plan — retire there eventually, fix it up on annual trips, let it wait. Maybe you already spend winters in Hokkaido but live somewhere …
Read more “What Happens If You Buy Property and Don’t Live There?”
Series: Buying Cheap Property in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan — Article 10 of 30 Nobody writes about this part. There are hundreds of articles about finding property in Japan, negotiating prices, understanding the legal process. But at some point you have to actually move $20,000 or $30,000 across the Pacific and into someone’s Japanese bank account, …
Read more “How to Send Money to Japan for a Property Purchase”
Series: Buying Cheap Property in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan — Article 9 of 30 When I tell people what I pay in annual property tax on my house in Otaru, they assume I’m leaving something out. There must be a homeowner’s association fee, or a special assessment, or some other line item I’m forgetting. There isn’t. …
Read more “Property Taxes in Japan: What You Actually Pay Each Year”
Series: Buying Cheap Property in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan — Article 8 of 30 The listing price is not the price. I knew this going in — I’ve bought property before, in other countries, and there’s always a spread between the number on the listing and the number you actually spend. But Japan’s version of this …
Series: Buying Cheap Property in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan — Article 7 of 30 The short answer is almost certainly not. I know that’s not what you want to hear. You’ve been reading about akiya selling for the price of a used Honda Civic, and you’re thinking there must be some way to finance this with …
In early January 2024, I was living in Hawaii and doing the math on houses I couldn’t afford. Hawaii was off the table — I’d been living there, I have a daughter there, and the median home price was somewhere north of $1,500,000 on Oahu. Oregon wasn’t much better for what I wanted. I was …