At the day of actual application - AND Seal In Japan

The below is my husband facebook post.
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The actual seller and seller's agent sit down in the same room as the buyer and buyer's agent, the money (which is CASH) is counted, and people affix their seals to documents.

For those of you who haven't heard of this practice or haven't experienced it, we don't sign things in Japan. We use an 印鑑, inkan, which is a rubber stamp with a seal on it. If I had a gander at why we use these in Asia, I would say that it has to do with the fact that writing is simply a bigger deal here - while some folks may lament the decline of handwriting skill in the West, that's peanuts to what people in the east would be bitching about. In Japan, they used to have to let entire provinces starve because the local officials' brushstrokes were slightly out of place.

Anyway, IF they were to, say, make the stamps electronic and take a PIN or something they would be vastly better than a signature. But as it is, they are obviously much less secure than a signature and easier to fake. If you steal a person's seal you can fuck with them quite a bit.

But there's something else we bumped into today. We went to the Ward Office to register my hanko, which is a thing you need to do if you are buying real estate (or a non-kei car, apparently).

Inkan are usually obtained as a pair, one for everyday use and one for serious shit, like real estate deals, my understanding was that its like, maybe your given name for the regular one, but the kanji for your family name AND your given name for the real-deal one.

So before I came here {Blogauthor}  got me one that says "{Name}”　and one that says "{Name}{Family Name}".

But then from the say I started filling out official forms to get to live here in Japan, they always asked me to put my name exactly as it appears on my passport. My passport application years ago needed me to enter my name exactly as it appears on my birth certificate, including middle name, so its "{Name} {Middle Name} {Family Name}" which in Japan means my family name is "{Family Name} " and given name is "{Name} {Middle Name} / {FullName(NotNickname)}" - no middle names here, so first + middle name becomes my given name.

Now I had always thought that the hanko was basically up to, could kind of be anything, because Japanese folks often have kanji with readings that are very obscure and the act of registering it, I thought, is what made it officially your seal.

But it rurns out, no, the seal needs to be YOUR NAME. It can actually be your family name, or your given name, or both, but it must match your name.

So my seal doesn't match my name, so I can't register it and need a new one.

And the places where we can get one fast don't support my full family name plus given name. So new seal ordered, whatever, I will register it and then I guess re-register it at the new place when I move then rarely if ever use it again.

BUT WAIT. {Blogauthor} changed her name early this year, to "{Name} {U.S. Family Name} {JP family Name"} - she keeps her family name but affixed some katakana to her given name, And when its written out on her new passport it makes more sense to customs/ immigration agents in America.

So she went through this big long process that involved appearing before a magistrate to get this done in her hometown's office. And used her existing seal of "{Name}" in kanji.

And nobody mentioned to her that she would have to get a new hanko to register, because her seal no longer matched her name.

Until we were in the ward office today, after having stamped a whole bunch of house buying forms with that seal.

Visit Surburb area (2)

1. Used house 7 year old 350 man yen 12 min walk from the terminal-to-be station.
We liked this place a lot. Since I don't like the idea of consuming the new development value plunge right after purchasing house, I kinda liked idea of buying not too old house, but used house.

Tax deduction have advantage buying new house, cover up to 4000 man yen for new house, and 2000 man yen for used house. However, we split the loan to half between us. Combing two of us, tax deduction deal would be the same between purchasing new and used house.

As a side note, Japanese bank would not allow couples to have joint-account.

 

2. 3 New houses from 15 min walk from the new station. 400 man yen. Not too bad. We considered seriously for a while.

3. New development in the middle of nowhere. 5 min walk from the new station, not terminal station. 350 man yen, currently in the middle of nowhere. There is a abandoned house right behind of the house, and the house is build at the corner of triangular land. I... had some eerie feeling about this house, beside the fact that house is not complete and cannot see the inside.

4. 25 year old house in the prestigious neighborhood, with big yard and 2 kitchen, 15 min from the terminal station. 470 man yen. Blurring the whole street, since people still live there.

 

Visit urban outskirt area

We visited urban residential areal.

1. New development in the hill in the middle of nowhere 4200 man yen.
Not too bad price considering the closest station is terminal station. However, there were garbage collection area right in front of the house. Not on the other side of the street. In front of the house.

2. Old home aprox. 30 years old in the prestigious neighborhood. 4000 man yen
We liked this house, but the earthquake resistant building registration would not give us tax credit if we get this house, unless we would do whole pricey inspection. Considering the trouble, we abondon the idea.

3. Old home in the quite bad shape with holes in the wall! 2700 man yen.
I have never see that much of the trashed house! I only see the possibility of demolishing the house itself, and rebuild new house.

4. New house 4100 man yen, close to the river. I looked up the place, it was flood hazard area.

The website I refereed for sorting out:

• Hazard Map
• Oshima Teru  

• It is silly to consider haunting possibilities. However, if you see many suicide and crimes in the perimeter of the house, that area might have been the area where low-income workers lives. This could be big consideration if you walk around with at night, no mention if you have kids to send school.

The below is my husband post to the facebook regarding the impression about the place 2.

We're not likely to buy this house, but just by way of sharing what the experience is like for friends back home...you should be able to feed this link to google translate or whatever...

This is the neighborhood I like best, near a river, with a local station nearby that has lots of amenities around it, though this house is at the base of the hill, and I would prefer to live up on the hill, and there was a house up there two weeks ago but it sold before we started looking.

This house was built in 1984, which is super fucking old by Japanese standards. This is after modern building standards were put into effect, so you can expect them to be sturdy, but Japanese people feel that houses naturally "rot" over time. Not sure how true it is, but they get moldy and infested is the fear. So whereas you get a nice tax break for a recently built house and a very nice tax break for new construction, you have a burden of a housing inspection and fixing anything deemed too far gone for something this old.

It was quite a bit nicer than I expected. The outside showed a bit of age, the bathrooms and wash room was kind of nasty and would need to be redone, the kitchen flooring needed to be redone and the kitchen itself would have to be redone pretty soon. There were two rooms with actual tatami and that's like one of those things...seems awesome to have but they are expensive to replace, they can get buggy, and are not necessarily compatible with pets.

It had a very nice little garden space, which tends to not be a thing on new development in the Tokyo area (to be honest, the huge new houses we saw up in Fukushima seemed to build out to the very edges of the plot also).

But here's the interesting part, we talked some numbers with our real estate guy, and this place is 39.8 million yen, right. That's like US$357,000.00

Interest rates are currently around half a percent.

Property taxes don't work the same here - it looks like you pay it up front or something? And while you do need mortgage insurance, that seems kind of low.

Anyway, the payment would work out to be something like 120,000 JPY a month - slightly more than $1000, for a 30-year term.

Visit the Suburb (1)

We visited 4 locations.

The real estate people drove around the heated day.

1. New house development in the quiet residential area (480 man yen) 12 min walk from the station

2. 5 year old home with 3 cars garage and backyard. Reformed in this year. Price was lowered due to the history of owners natural death in the house. (360 man yen)  15min walk from the station
3. 3 year old home with moderate size. Right next to local river. 15min walk from the station. (360 man yen)
4. New house development right next to the project residential. 20min walk from the station
 (400 man yen)
We have our dog-hter, we immediately called back to them we are curious for 2.
But buyer received application in that night. So, we were too late to get the deal. Darn.

Pre-approval of loan from Bank

We pre-applied for the application of the loan, using approximate sudo house application. According to the real estate people, it would be easier and shorten to get approved by bank when we are previously approved by the other banks.
This required the following documents.

- Drivers licence, and for my husband, Foreign registration card.
- Gensen-Choshu (Tax report given from your employee)
- Employee-issued proof letter of employment
- Work history letter
- Seal (A stamp with your name)

My husband wanted to live closer to metropolitan Tokyo, outskirt of capital area. He preferred new house, closer to the station than current apartment (approx 18 min walk) Those approximate price were no lower than 5000 man yen. (a half million USD)

On the other hand, I tend to like living in quiet area, while I need to commute to Tokyo more frequently than my husband.
I found an suburban area currently under urbanization plan, expanding to be railroad intersection.
I decided that location as an idea of counter offering idea of suburb area.

It is challenging to write down in forms and stamp the seal for my husband, since the form follows quite a local rule in Japan. So, I asked the copy of the forms previously, so that my husband can expect what should be filled in each square of the form.

But timing was not so great. My husband was getting Japanese test in the beginning of July. So, we decided put the process in hiatus in order for him to concentrate to the test, without getting bothered by collecting documentation/paperwork stuff.

Buying or Keep Renting?

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.

• Example of WTH price 3LDK condo in Tokyo.
• Example of 4LDK house around the area where I grew up