In the beginning of May, we start to consider getting out of the current apartment.
The apartment is in Kawasaki, Japan. The location is not too far from my work, however, due to the local traffic trying to avoid main road, thus trucks running through in front of our apartment, the noise level is getting intolerable for both of us who work frequently from home. My husband work from home everyday.
Since our rent renewal will be next year, my husband started to wonder around real estate office around station area, and caught by sales people in front of stations. Considering trust level of catch-sales people, I started to be serious.
Starting from Facebook. I casually asked around my friend "Who knows well about real estate?" And surprisingly I had a sort of related distant relative who work as a real estate agent. The agency is well known, a bit too prestigious for us and their service might possibly be overkill, but I prefer to give handling fee to my relatives rather than total strangers.
I gave my relative my number, and briefly talked over phone, and made appointment to their office at the end of the May 2018.
I visited to real estate office and talked about our situation. One young lady other than my relative are in charge of our case. Our apartment lease will expire in May, 2019. And I was wondering if I should keep renting or purchase house. Since we have a dog, it is getting harder to find apartment for our family. Also because of my husband preference we have standard American furniture such as living room couch and full size family table and big TV. Also, I have electric piano. The both of us have many many computers coming with our professions/curiosity directions.
The real estate people are open for our consideration. They showed some possibilities. Most of the deals are much much cheaper to purchase, than keep renting. Also, the tax deduction from owning house is high, and interest rate is low, so we decided to start this endeavor of buying house.
