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Buying a home in Japan sounds like a fantasy until you meet the people who actually make it happen.
YukiHomes Presents is a show about Japan... its houses, its regions, and what it really takes for a foreigner to own a piece of it. From the snow country of Hokkaido and Nagano to the cities, coasts, and small towns in between, it's a look at the country through the eyes of the people who help others put down a stake in it.
Every episode goes deep on one thing. Sometimes that's property: what an akiya is and why old Japanese houses sell for the price of a used car, how a foreigner actually buys and renovates a home, which regions are worth it and which are hype. Sometimes it's everything around the houses: the food, the seasons, the onsen towns and ski hills, the design and craft, the culture, and the parts of doing this that are harder than anyone admits.
Hosted by Nick and Derek, co-founders of YukiHomes, and Grant (YukiHomes PR & Media Lead). Along the way you'll meet the builders, guides, shop owners, and buyers who know this country better than any guidebook.
No top-10 travel lists. Just honest conversations about Japan, and what it takes to own a piece of it.
New episodes every other week.
www.yukihomes.com
www.nipponhomes.com
Nick (00:00)
we do manage your property tax. often with taxes, you actually have to walk
Nick (00:04)
into 7-Eleven sometimes to pay your property taxes. And we have a team that'll do that.
grant (00:09)
Hey guys, welcome to the Yuki Home Presents Podcast, everyone's new favorite podcast. Derek's on Bean, Nick's on Blue. I'm gonna be on 16 soon. Today we're gonna be walking through the Yuki Home's buyers program in details, walking you through an initial
grant (00:23)
consultation, what happens after you sign up, the house search process, making offers, the whole nine. Basically, if you've ever wondered how a foreigner actually buys a house in Japan without getting scammed or lost in translation, this is the episode for you. So, Derek.
Nick (00:25)
you
grant (00:37)
Or Nick. I am, you know, looking to buy a house in Japan. I'm trying to find how to book a call with you guys. Where do I start?
Derek (00:45)
So you would st there's a few ways you could find us. You'd start on the Yuki Homes website start page. You could book a link there. You could go to nipponhomes.com, any single house you like. There should be a book a con book a consultation button. And that would take you to our calendar and you'd get on a 20-minute call with us. And that call would be for you to ask any questions, any concerns you have. We're gonna do our best to get answered. And hopefully you'll have a understanding of how our process works briefly, because we have a nice
Derek (01:11)
video sales letter that's a minute 40 seconds so that call is really for you to get all your concerns answered.
grant (01:19)
So what what's in that video if I've never watched it before?
Nick (01:21)
Ahem.
Derek (01:22)
It's just
Derek (01:22)
a short overview of what we're gonna talk about today. So it's a quick minute forty summarization of like you're gonna get on a call if you wanna move forward, you're gonna pay our fee. From there we're gonna onboard you. From there we're gonna home search and then from there we're gonna get your your house and then all the post purchase stuff we can do as well, which we're gonna go through that whole process right now.
grant (01:41)
All right, so I book a call.
Nick (01:42)
It
Nick (01:43)
might make sense too. mean, you can just DM us. It's that easy. We'll send you the link. So like they don't need to go through much great lengths. I don't think you mentioned neponhomes.com. Maybe you did, but if you, okay. So book a consultation through there. If you find a house you like, cool.
Derek (01:57)
I did.
grant (02:01)
Alright, so I book a call. Who am I talking to? You or Nick or both you guys?
Derek (02:05)
Fifty fifty.
Nick (02:05)
Sometimes
Nick (02:06)
both of us, if you're really lucky. Now, normally it's just one of us. Derek takes morning calls. I take the afternoon calls for the most part in the U.S. Obviously, if you're in Australia, it's like the opposite, but yeah, you'll talk to one of us and we'll run you through the whole process.
grant (02:22)
Okay, so I'm on the call to pitch me. What's going on?
Nick (02:26)
You
Derek (02:27)
I mean, it's your call. The call is for you, Grant. So you would be, you know, common questions people ask are, hey, do I get to own this home outright? You know, so many countries, you have a hundred-year lease on the land and you never really own it. In Japan, you own your land and you own your house. There's some leasehold properties, but we would never steer you in that direction. you're gonna ask, I mean, people ask about all sorts of things like earthquake rules. If my house is
Derek (02:51)
Pre-1981, which is when they made the rule standard. Do I need to upgrade it to the eighty-one rules? No, you don't. That is totally a personal call. they're gonna ask, you know, can I Airbnb my house? Like, how does that work? You know, we're gonna go through all of that. There's a a whole process to getting Airbnb'd. We're gonna have a whole episode specifically about that because it is not like the US. You can't just take pictures, post your house, and start earning. It's a much more bureaucratic process.
Nick (03:18)
Yeah, a lot of red tape. was just gonna, I mean, before you like ask the next question, do you want to run through like a couple super frequently asked questions? I mean, like, for example, taxes that the rates are actually pretty similar to like rates on property tax in New York, but because these properties are so cheap, so ours is valued at like 40 grand. Our property tax is like $650 a year, like 650 US.
grant (03:18)
Okay, what is your gu what is your guy go for it.
grant (03:28)
I think that would be great.
Nick (03:45)
flat, people ask if they can insure the property. Yes, you can. Typically, we have two types of insurance, like property itself and then contents. like the household goods or whatever you might have in there. keep, you know, pretty expensive snow gear in our house. So we insure that in total we pay like 700 to 800 US per year. All these payments are also in yen.
Nick (04:11)
So obviously as the yen strengthens, the US dollar amount that we're paying might go up slightly. But right now, like last year and this year, those are about the costs. I'm trying to think of some other frequently asked.
Derek (04:22)
Parking spots, people always ask about parking. A lot of people wanna get cars. we have a few people we could point you to to help you get a car. You need a parking spot. So if that's something you wanna do, we'll help you make sure.
Nick (04:24)
Ahem.
Nick (04:33)
Mm-hmm. Here's something too about
Nick (04:34)
parking spots specifically. You will probably have to shovel in the winter or like pay for snow shoveling if you're not there to keep a car there. If you have a garage, awesome. And then some of these parking spots, yes, they're designated parking spots, but a lot of times they'll measure the car itself and they'll measure the spot and they want to make sure that your car can fit in that spot. So if you're going to buy a massive 14 passenger van,
Nick (04:59)
but your spot fits like a Mazda, that won't work. So that's just like, they, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we have seen it happen.
Derek (05:03)
They're gonna literally come out with measuring tape to your house and measure the spot.
grant (05:10)
Do
grant (05:10)
people ever ask you guys about financing?
Derek (05:12)
Yeah.
Nick (05:13)
Yeah,
Nick (05:13)
go ahead.
Derek (05:13)
Yeah, so I would I mean every deal we've done is cash. So you cannot get a mortgage. Obviously, the rates in Japan are very attractive. I know someone who just got a 0.7% mortgage for 35 years, which is amazing. we cannot access those. So you can get like a hard money loan. The rates are not gonna be attractive. Honestly, my personal opinion if you're gonna buy a house in Japan, don't get a hard money loan to do it. Save up and get a cash.
Nick (05:39)
Yeah, I was just going to say there's like loan shark style companies that you can use. And even for residences, residents, residents, residents of Japan, sometimes banks won't even give them a loan in some of these super rural areas. So if you're buying in Tokyo or if you're buying in Osaka or like any of the major cities as a resident, it's possible to get a loan. It's actually pretty easy. But as a non-resident or non-citizen of Japan, it's almost impossible.
Nick (06:07)
And yeah, there's some companies online again that will do it. Major areas, it's possible. But where we're selling typically, like it's all cash purchases. And should I say the stupid thing about all cash?
Derek (06:22)
I don't think anyone thinks that, but you could rip it.
Nick (06:26)
When I was a kid, I thought
Nick (06:28)
all cash meant you had to show up with like wads of money in your hands. But I now know that all cash just means you have to make a transfer. And we could shout out Wyze, who's like our money transfer partner. They've just been like the most cost effective and fastest for transferring money or funds, like for all of our clients and for us and contractors and everything. So yeah, that's the way to do it.
Derek (06:52)
Yeah, that that rural
Derek (06:54)
that rural rule, pr any home, by the way, pre eighty one, even if you're a Japanese citizen, they're not they're not giving you a mortgage for, which I would say probably s I don't know, twenty to thirty percent of our buyers buy pre nineteen eighty one.
Nick (06:59)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (07:07)
Yeah, I mean they do also say 50 % of homes built before 1981 still meet those standards. It's just impossible to tell which ones. I mean the ones that are still standing, maybe it's them, but hard to really say.
grant (07:19)
So people that are booking calls with you, are a lot of them bringing houses that they've found to you, or are you guys kind of offering your services to help find them at home? They kind of bring you an area that they like, you know, maybe it's a ski r ski town or beach town. How do you guys go about that?
Nick (07:35)
Yeah, I would say 20 % of our buyers bring us an actual house that they're currently interested in, whether they found it on neponhomes.com or otherwise. And something to note here probably, if you bring us a house that you definitely want, we end up closing on that specific house. We only charge you half of our fee because what we're charging for is the research, we do the home finding, we will sort out a location for you, and we even make sure
Nick (08:03)
the property is like eligible to rent if that's what you're interested in. We'll make sure it's zoned appropriately. We'll call local municipalities and make sure snow plowing is gonna happen on the roads that your house might be or connected to. So there's like a whole lot more that goes into just finding the home. But whether or not you bring us a house, we would love to work with you and...
Nick (08:26)
I think it typically works out better when someone just gives us one to three general areas that they're interested in. And then Derek and Michelle, every morning in the US, every morning in Japan, they're basically like house hunting, loading up essentially a spreadsheet for you to kind of start taking a look at. And that gives you a better idea of what's in your, we call it like a buy box and what you can afford based on your budget, how many bedrooms you want, do you need a parking spot, that sort of thing.
Derek (08:52)
Yeah. So to add to Nick's point, a lot of the work we do is like helping you get a house because most of our clients want to rent. So like we do ROI breakdowns for a lot of our clients. And I've gotten more than 10 DMs at this point of hey, can you get my house license for reoken and manage it? And we are happy to do that. Even if you didn't co go through our buying process, we're happy to help you at any step of the way, renovations, utility management, all that stuff that we're gonna go into.
Derek (09:19)
But a lot of these people who DM me, they buy houses that are not zoned correctly. So they'll send me the location. I'll check really quick and right away I can tell they're in the wrong zone to rent. So in Japan, to get an Airbnb license, you have to be in a proper zone. And there is nothing you can do to get your house licensed if you're in the wrong zone. So that right there, in my opinion, is worth our fee. Cause we're gonna make sure if Airbnb is important to you, you're getting a house that you can definitely rent.
Nick (09:46)
Yeah, I mean, last probably thing on that, this is where a lot of these illegal Mimpacus start to come in because people buy a house, they didn't know they weren't in the appropriate zone. I think probably some people play the foreigner card like, I didn't know, but it's not extremely difficult for us to figure out. And just going into a property purchase, knowing for a fact that, you know, the outcome you want is achievable is pretty worth its weight in gold, I would say.
Nick (10:15)
I don't know, I just, feel bad. get a lot of DMs about managing properties and since we're like a company and trying to stay legitimate, we can't list your property if it's not zoned appropriately. And these are the laws that a lot of news articles are coming out. You know, people are getting cracked down on and you know, we just don't want that to be us. We don't want that to be our clients. So, you know, we make sure that.
Derek (10:33)
Yeah, April
Derek (10:35)
April of this year, they just stepped up the enforcement. They passed a new law. So they're using some sort of machine learning that is gonna scan Airbnb and pair it and then also scan local databases and say, Okay, is this license match this house? Okay, it's meme paku. Are they going over the hundred eighty day limit? So they're doing some automated system to like actively scan all these things. So yeah, I like that, which is good.
Nick (10:39)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (10:59)
Yeah, for tech guys,
Nick (11:01)
think it's just rental platforms are exposing the number of days that are rented. It's also a requirement when you're renting your house to collect identification, number of people staying and all that stuff. So we do have like a separate kind of form that all guests staying at a property that we're managing need to fill out, give us their passport information like that. We don't save it ourselves because that's like PII.
Nick (11:28)
illegal, but the rental platforms themselves save it. I think it's for about six months. And if the country of Japan asks for it, they are required to share that. you know, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes and Japan is it. Yeah, yeah, they they save it forever, but we have access for six months if like an issue comes up. What I was just saying is like Japan is the type of country that.
Derek (11:41)
I think we have to save it forever. I don't think we can get rid of the data.
grant (11:43)
I was
Nick (11:55)
they're on top of a lot of their systems and processes. Like I wouldn't just assume you're gonna get by doing something that is not, not.
grant (12:02)
I think we're going off on like a crazy tangent here. No, for sure, is great information, but we're tr we're also trying to do an Airbnb episode that I think that this that's gonna translate to more. all right.
Derek (12:03)
Yeah.
Derek (12:05)
That was all good information.
Derek (12:13)
yeah. Yeah, yeah. True, true.
Nick (12:17)
I mean, we can
Nick (12:17)
say things twice.
Derek (12:18)
Yeah, for sure.
grant (12:19)
Okay. I'm just saying.
Nick (12:20)
I mean, Grant,
Nick (12:21)
you know what? I really didn't want to have to do this.
Derek (12:23)
Ha ha ha.
grant (12:25)
All right, so I'm getting us back on the rails. So, you know, we finished this call, I'm stoked, I'm ready to sign up. Tell me the next steps. Where do I pay your fee? What d what is the fee? What does that entail?
Derek (12:27)
Grant's getting us back on the rails, guys.
Derek (12:37)
Mm-hmm.
Derek (12:39)
For sure. So you would use Stripe. Our fee is forty nine hundred USD. You're going to pay us half up front, twenty-four fifty, and half when you close or after twelve months, whichever comes first. And like Nick said, if you come to us with a house, we would just charge you 2450 up front and that's it. So you pay that fee. We're going to onboard you in a group chat with me, Nick, our partner Michelle, and one of our partner agents, depending on the region you're in. And we're going to get started.
Derek (13:07)
We're gonna get started home searching. So I'm gonna be actively adding homes to a Google spreadsheet style list we've built directly into Nippon. It's awesome. It's super convenient. You could be adding homes to that list as well. We can be adding homes outside of Nippon, which I do very often. I mean, I look on every every edge of the internet to find you the best home. And anytime you see a home you like, you'd give us a heads up. We'd send someone from our team out there to do a very detailed
Derek (13:35)
video tour, we'd get a bunch of photos. We'd do a Google Sheet break Google Doc breakdown of like, hey, you know, there's water leaks on the second floor bedroom. you know, there may be mold here. The floor is tilted. These are very common issues we're gonna see. And of course, when we have a ton of issues come up, we're gonna advise you likely to move on from that property. And then yeah, that's that's the process. It will continue until you find a house you like and you want to make an offer.
Nick (14:00)
Yeah, to be clear too, like the real estate agent typically gives the advice on the property itself. We basically help analyze or understand what's going on based on the walkthrough that we do. And sometimes the real estate agent themselves will do the walkthrough. Other times we'll be able to send someone from there or our team. It kind of just depends on the type of property. But yeah, I just wanted to like make sure that's clear.
grant (14:25)
And how many homes will you guys tour for me if I send twenty homes?
Derek (14:25)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (14:31)
Yeah, I say on every sales call that after, you know, eight to 10 home tours, if we start to just kind of feel like you're kicking the tires, we will probably have to start charging travel fees, either us or the real estate agent. We've actually never charged a client in like a we have hundred and six clients. We've never charged a travel fee. But I just always caveat and it's in our contract. We're not just going to be your
Derek (14:31)
That's lot.
grant (14:32)
I'm just curious.
Nick (14:58)
eyes for unlimited amount of time. If people are serious about buying a property, I would say they typically tour anywhere from like two to four properties is like our average. There are occasions too where it doesn't make sense to even tour the property. We just need to make an offer. Like if you're looking at Miyoko, if you're looking in even Oteru now, if you're looking in Hakuba, if you're looking near Niseko.
Derek (15:15)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (15:23)
Any of these kind of popular areas, Iyama, a house comes up on the market, day of, we're on top of it. We might, you you might need to make an offer is all I'm saying. And we get it. It's not ideal, but that's the same thing, you know, in America. I live in San Diego most of the time and properties come up here that in an hour there's 10 offers on. It works, you know, pretty similarly.
Derek (15:34)
Yeah.
Derek (15:48)
Yeah, and I hate like I hate saying to the client, they sign up with us, a really sick house pops up, and me and Nick are like, Hey, by the way, from we've been working in this market for a while. If you really want this house, you're gonna have to move quick. I don't like saying that because it gives the impression that we're just like trying to get a deal done quick, and it's not how it is. And what usually happens is people miss the first one or two homes because they want to take it slow, and then they realize, okay, these guys were being serious.
Derek (16:15)
This is an extremely hot market.
Nick (16:17)
Yeah, it might be worth saying too, we make zero dollars on the transaction of a home. All of that goes to the real estate agent and the brokerage. So we literally don't care if you buy a house or not. Obviously we want you to succeed and we want you to get the house you want. If we're going to be doing rentals, if we're going to be managing the house, we don't want you to get a property that sucks. So, you know, we're going to do our best to let you know. Sorry, I just kicked my table.
Derek (16:40)
Mm-hmm.
Derek (16:43)
That sounded like it hurt. That was a loud bang.
grant (16:44)
I know.
Nick (16:44)
Nah,
Nick (16:45)
it's fine. I'm fine.
grant (16:47)
All right, so you found my perfect home. How what's the next steps? How am I making an offer? Like offer gets accepted. What's going on?
Derek (16:50)
Mm-hmm.
Derek (16:55)
So that's when like our agent would step in. So whoever our agent is at the time, you're gonna be communicating with them. Yeah.
Nick (17:01)
Not just one agent. You have one
Nick (17:03)
agent. We work with tons of agents.
Derek (17:06)
With multiple agents. Yeah. So you're gonna our agent's gonna step in, you're gonna describe to him the offer you wanna make. He'll likely advise you the best thing to do. There is a lot of nuanced differences in buying real estate in Japan versus buying you real estate in the US or Australia. Even if a house has been on the market for six months, you can't come in and lowball. I get DMs all the time, specifically for that on send property. Hey, I I w I'll offer 80K when it's listed for 150K. And I advise them like.
Derek (17:34)
No agent is gonna do that because they risk ruining their reputation and insulting the other agent. So 10 to 15% is really the most you can offer below. So you'll advise whatever agent of ours you're working with: hey, I want to make this offer. They're gonna submit an LOI, a letter of intent. And that letter of intent is a socially binding offer. So it is not legally binding until you sign the contract. But if they accept that LOI,
Derek (18:01)
There is a social, social contract attached to that LOI. So they're not gonna back out. They're not gonna accept a higher offer even if it comes in. And they're gonna, they're gonna, my brain just died. They're gonna expect the same respect back from you. So they're not gonna like you can't just make an offer and then, a better house pops up. They accepted your LOI. Sorry, I'm gonna move on to this better house. You cannot do that in Japan. You can legally do it, but you'll ruin our relationship.
Derek (18:28)
And we probably won't work with you after that because there's a chance that the agent we want that we deal with all the time is going to cut ties with us. So that LOI is a serious offer. It's not you can't just throw 10 offers out like you can in the US. So if the LOI gets accepted, it's about 10 to 14 days before the explanation of important matters. You're gonna get on a call with our agent and he's gonna explain to you the contract, and then you're gonna send him 10%.
Derek (18:56)
A 10% deposit through WISE, and you're gonna sign the contract. That is when it's gonna become legally officially your house.
Nick (19:03)
Yeah, might make sense just like a couple of things to add there. Not all the time is earnest money 10 percent on some of these hotter properties. It can be up to 20 percent. There are also in our experience brokerages that just, you know, are less likely to sell to foreigners. So we've done things that included in the L.O.I., like a video recording of the client and their family explaining why they like the house, what they plan to do with the house, stuff like that.
grant (19:03)
Okay.
Nick (19:31)
We've increased the earnest money deposit to 50 % actually. And in one scenario, this is a relatively cheap house. We've actually paid all of it upfront. So the contract and the settlement date were at the same time. But this is kind of interesting to a lot of people. LOI gets accepted. There's a contract date where you sign the contract, house is yours. That's when you would pay the earnest deposit. And then sometimes like two months later, three months later, ours was three or four months later where we actually settled on the house.
Derek (19:57)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (19:59)
paid the full amount and then the property was ours. I don't know if you wanted to go this far too, but then you can actually go onto like the municipality. Okay, then you can actually go onto the municipality's website and this takes about two months and you can type in your address and it'll actually show you this is who the property belongs to. It'll be you obviously, or the company or entity that you put the property in. So yeah, mean, those are like the lengths that you can go to to be sure.
Derek (20:08)
Go far, go deep.
Nick (20:28)
and even like taking it back now, people book calls with us, I think sometimes just to make sure this is real because it's still, we're like in it, so it's very believable. But I think when people first hear, you can buy a $20,000 house 20 minutes from one of the best snow resorts, ski resorts in the world, like that just doesn't sound real at all.
Derek (20:47)
Yeah,
Derek (20:48)
for sure. And two other things to add, there's there's so much there's so much that goes on in this process and so many questions people ask. And a really common one is can I get my house inspected? You would you would never buy a house in the US or Australia without getting an inspection done. In Japan, it's extremely uncommon to get an inspection. So if you wanted to get one, you can intact you can attach an inspection contingency to that LOI. And if they accept it,
Derek (21:13)
They'll give you time to get an inspection, review it, and then decide to go forward. And of course, you can back out after reviewing that inspection and there would be no hard feelings. But an important caveat to all that is in these really hot towns, Miyoko, Otaru, putting an inspection contingency is automatically going to make your offer less attractive to these agents because they don't normally deal with that. So a lot of times, again, we have to advise people like, hey, if you really want this house.
Derek (21:40)
maybe consider and don't get an inspection, which is you know, it's tough to hear for a lot of people 'cause it's really common, so to get an inspection in America.
Nick (21:47)
Yeah,
Nick (21:48)
the other thing that's interesting to me is attaching an inspection contingency sometimes is heard as like a disrespect type of thing because the seller, the seller's agent or the person who's actually selling the property understands that it's an Ackea or they understand that it's an old home and it's priced accordingly. So asking for an inspection can sometimes come off as like, I don't really believe that you're pricing this thing accordingly.
Nick (22:15)
Obviously that's not what we're thinking and that's not what you're thinking, but that's just one of those things that comes off culturally slightly different. And yeah, mean, I would probably, I don't know, it's hard. I would never want to buy a property in the States without an inspection. Like it's just how it's done. In Japan, we didn't get one on our house. would say 40 % of our clients submit an offer with an inspection contingency. And I would say,
Derek (22:30)
Yeah.
Nick (22:41)
Of the ones who do, 50 % of the houses they don't end up getting because of the contingency. So, just so people understand the risk and how much do want the property versus how safe do you want to be. Obviously, people have different levels of risk.
Derek (22:46)
Yeah.
Derek (22:56)
Yeah, my advice is always do what makes you comfortable. If not getting an inspection is gonna make you very uncomfortable, then you'll just lose a couple of houses, but we'll eventually get you one. If that's what makes you comfortable, that's what you should do.
grant (23:10)
Alright, so I put a offering on the house, but you guys might have more clients interested in this house. You said that these areas are hot, Miyoku, Otaru. have you guys had in the past bidding wars on a certain property?
Nick (23:23)
Yeah, so we've only ever seen one bidding war in Miyoko and it wasn't between two of our clients. We have, however, shown multiple clients the same property and it truly just works on a first come first serve basis. If you are willing to purchase a property at asking price without an inspection contingency and you respond first, that's probably the first offer that's going to be submitted.
Nick (23:46)
You know, mean, Derek, you and I have gone back and forth on how exactly we should deal with this, and that seems to be the most fair to me. What do you think?
Derek (23:54)
Yeah, I mean, that's how the agents, the sellers' agents operate. Whoever gets the LOI in first, if it's a full price offer, they're usually gonna accept it. So we tell people, Hey, here's two video tour, here's the video tour of this house. We'll send it to however many clients are interested. And we'll say we have, you know, other people who are interested in this house. So if you want it, speed is is is gonna be favored here. So whoever gets it in first is gonna get the house, usually.
Nick (24:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
grant (24:19)
Okay. So if the house is a hundred thousand dollars is what fees I'm just using a easy I'm using the easy easy number, even number. So sticker price is a hundred thousand. Tell me about the fees associated with that.
Derek (24:24)
That's an expensive house, great.
Nick (24:27)
Grant's got expensive taste.
Derek (24:29)
Grant's Grant's got big money. Yeah.
Derek (24:37)
Yeah, let me pull up.
Nick (24:38)
Yeah, I was just about to say you have it. We have a whole list of fees. Derek will pull it up. In terms of like total lump sum on, I think we have the math, which is like an average purchase price on like a $60,000 house, you could expect to pay like 10 to 12,000. That percentage is relatively high. As the price of the house gets higher, the percent gets lower, but there's definitely a floor. So legally, there's even a floor for real estate commissions.
Derek (24:40)
I'm gonna pull up a calculator.
Nick (25:06)
So like, if you buy a zero or $1 house, you're still gonna pay thousands of dollars in real estate commission. Just wanna make sure clients know that going in.
Derek (25:15)
Yeah, for sure. A lot of people get confused with that. They're like, the house is a thousand bucks and I'm paying 7K in fees, but people need to get paid for the work. So how it's gonna work is you're gonna pay a 3% commission to the agent. And that 3% commission is set to a floor of 330,000 yen for any home under 8 million. 330,000 yen at today's exchange rate is about $2,053. So you're gonna pay about that.
Derek (25:43)
But if we're talking about a $100,000 house, you're gonna pay about $3,000 USD in real estate commission. You're gonna pay $250,000 yen to our scrivener, which is essentially a closing attorney. So he's gonna do the legal checks and 250,000 yen at today's exchange rate is $1,500. So we're at $1,450. So $1,450, you're gonna have one, you're gonna have 5.4% in taxes to the government, but that's gonna be on the assessed value of your home.
Derek (26:12)
The assessed value is often 70% of what you paid. So that's $70,000. You could roughly guess your house is going to be assessed at. So point, you're going to pay 5.4% in taxes on that $70,000. And that is going to be another $3,700. So we're at $4,500. That is someone do the math for me. The math on live, live on the air. It's going to be like,
Nick (26:35)
40. It's probably
Nick (26:39)
like 16.
Derek (26:41)
So it's gonna be 4,500 and it's gonna be 84, 8,500 plus 700. It's gonna be $9,200. So $9,200 USD in fees on a $100,000 house plus our fee. And we're gonna chart, we charge $4,900 USD. So all in, you would be $9,200. I really hope I'm doing this, Mr.
Nick (27:01)
Almost 16,000.
Derek (27:04)
Thirteen, thirteen thousand.
Nick (27:04)
And I mean, yeah, and the judicial scrivener fee can change depending on if he has to travel. You know, sometimes the seller will accept digital documentation, digital signatures. Often, you know, they want wet ink signatures. So you're gonna need to go to get a notary, whatever the notary costs where you live.
Nick (27:22)
I know, I don't want to have anything hidden, but it is really just like buying a property anywhere else. There's fees associated and you're paying attorneys and people like
Derek (27:33)
Yeah.
grant (27:33)
So you're not paying
grant (27:34)
the seller's agent fee? 'Cause I know in the US in the US you pay buyer's agent and seller's agent as the buyer, correct?
Derek (27:38)
No. What do you mean?
Derek (27:44)
The seller,
Derek (27:44)
yeah. The seller of the house pays the seller agent. The buyer of the house pays the buyer agent in Japan.
Nick (27:49)
Yeah,
Nick (27:50)
there are some sellers brokerages that want to take both sides of the commission. And in that case, typically, like if you want to work with one of our agents, which I would totally recommend, you just do have to pay their floor price for them to act as essentially your agent and like act on your behalf. Otherwise, that's where you could get into some trouble. And we do have clients.
Nick (28:13)
that this happens to. It's probably happened four times, five times. We've always opted to, it's happening right now. Yeah, we've always opted to use one of our agents just to basically make sure all the contracts look good. It just feels a lot safer and better having someone, an agent act on behalf of you rather than basically trusting the seller's party, which I'm not saying distrust them, but trust but verify is like a good term I'd like to use.
Derek (28:18)
Happening right now.
Derek (28:40)
Yeah, for sure.
Derek (28:42)
other thing that a surprise fee, I'm trying to think of other examples of people feeling like they got shocked with a fee, and one that happens f somewhat frequently is our scrivener sometimes has to travel to the location during the closing. So they don't want to do a digital signature, which means our scrivener has to fly from where he lives to the location and meet the other agency in person. And of course
Derek (29:06)
He has to bill for those hours. He has to bill for flying his hotel. So that can happen. And unfortunately, it happens more than we'd like.
Nick (29:14)
Yeah, probably like 30 % of homes, 25, 30 % homes.
Derek (29:18)
Yeah.
grant (29:18)
Okay, so I get the house, I close on the house, and then it needs renovations. What's next steps?
Nick (29:24)
Yeah, so typically we do need to wait for the settlement date, which could be 60 to 90 days out for us to send a contractor in there. But yeah, once we have the settlement date, whatever you want to do with the keys will help you do. So that's probably like the one step that we kind of just blew through is like getting the keys. You can fly there for the actual settlement date. You can go in yourself, get the keys. Typically our real estate agent will just collect the keys for you.
Nick (29:50)
often we'll just send them to one of our property managers wherever your house happens to be and we'll put the keys behind a lock box, you know, on a gate, on the front door, wherever. Japan is super, super safe, especially these rural areas. We've never even had remotely an issue. A funny kind of funny story. We let the male people just like walk directly into our house. They have access. So if they need to drop off packages,
Derek (30:06)
Yeah.
Nick (30:15)
they can just walk right in. I
grant (30:16)
Mm.
Nick (30:17)
do have a camera and for all rental properties, we install a camera and like a digital lock. So, you know, I can see who's going in, who's going out. You'll have access to that if we're managing your property. But yeah, basically after the settlement date, we'll have a contractor walk through. If you already know what you want, they'll just walk through basically and price out what you're recommending. I'd say 75 plus percent of the time, people will kind of...
Nick (30:43)
trust us and trust the contractors to walk through and give like a good description of, hey, there's some damage here. We should probably replace the floors in this room. Almost always we're doing new tatami if you have tatami rooms. Basic stuff like that. You'd be surprised what a really good cleaning on a kitchen could do. That's all we ever ended up doing with our house. And replacing a kitchen unit is not super cheap. yeah, basically we have a contractor walk through. We'll get one, maybe two quotes.
Derek (31:04)
Mm-hmm.
Nick (31:12)
We have multiple contracting teams in a lot of these areas, so we'll balance pricing off of one another. We do have a great architect interior designer, Hanna. She manages most of the projects, especially if you want help with material selection, colors, textures. I'm talking as if I know anything about interior design right now, but wallpaper, stuff like that. And then, yeah, that's kind of the initial start of the project.
Derek (31:32)
Hay
Derek (31:39)
You know what's super funny is our house, Hanna, like for a long time thought we designed it and she didn't she didn't like it, so she she kept her mouth shut. she's like, Yeah, yeah, it looks great. we didn't design our house. Unfortunately, there were some decisions made about our house without us being asked, and that would never happen to a c yeah, that's common. And unfortunately, like we didn't know that. So for our clients, we would never let that happen. But
Nick (31:46)
kept her mouth shut.
grant (31:48)
Ha ha.
grant (31:53)
Ha ha
Nick (32:00)
That's common also.
Derek (32:07)
We made that mistake and we have some funky wallpaper. I've learned to like it, but ha Hana doesn't Hana doesn't like it.
Nick (32:11)
Yeah, I think people like it.
Nick (32:14)
The idea was so that when you're sitting in the tatami room, the other room has like a rainforest or like a wood forest wallpaper and you're sitting in the tatami room like looking at the forest. If you sit in like one five square foot location in the house, you can get the feeling.
Derek (32:22)
Well
Derek (32:31)
Yeah.
grant (32:31)
It's like a rainforest cafe vibe.
Nick (32:33)
Yeah, exactly.
Derek (32:33)
I've never I've never
Derek (32:34)
got the feeling, Grant. It's never it's never hit me.
Nick (32:38)
Well, we did have to change that brick wallpaper. It was like fake brick on the entrance. mean, whatever. We lived and we learned wallpaper's not super expensive. the one other kind of, I mean, this is just kind of a crazy thing about our house. I don't think we've really ever talked about it. We had our doors wallpapered.
grant (32:39)
That that warm feeling in your chest.
Derek (32:41)
It's never happened.
Derek (32:45)
That was insane.
grant (32:55)
What do you guys charge?
Nick (33:03)
And within like two weeks of us being there, it was just peeling off. So we replaced the doors, which now we do on every client house and that seems to be the norm. So I just thought that was like a very interesting thing to do was to like wallpaper the doors.
Derek (33:17)
Yeah, and it like the seams were like at the edges where it hit the the the door frame. So it was just peeling off instantly.
Nick (33:20)
Yeah, it was
Nick (33:23)
interesting.
grant (33:23)
Okay, what do you guys charge for like for you guys to handle the renovations and then what do you guys charge for management of the property and like taking care of all my bills, all my taxes, stuff like that?
Nick (33:29)
Yeah.
Nick (33:37)
Okay.
Derek (33:38)
And licensing, Nick, get in there too about the Airbnb licensing.
Nick (33:39)
Okay, all right. Those
Nick (33:41)
are four separate, like, la carte things. We have had people who own a property come to us just for renovation. We charge 20 % as like a coordination management fee. We obviously are paying Hana well, we're paying our employees. And I don't know, people get like kind of weird about that fee sometimes, but it's a lot of work to manage a renovation from overseas plus the employees that we have on site plus...
Nick (34:06)
Everyone's bilingual. Plus we've vetted all these contractors. So there's like a lot of work that's going into this stuff.
Derek (34:12)
Yeah, another another quick thing. Nick's gonna keep going, but I'll just in interject here. Everyone who's done our renovation plan has been super happy with it. I know obviously it's our company, so it's sounds like I'm just being biased, but Nick gets so many photos every week that it feels like you're you know every step of the way. Like I've gotten renovations done here in the US that I've had less information on than the information Nick gets on.
Derek (34:39)
Our clients' houses in Japan.
Nick (34:41)
Yeah, I mean, it's not just me. We have a huge team, honestly, working these renovations. At the time of this podcast, we have 19 renovations ongoing. I think we're about to start two more. And at this point, we're kind of getting to the point where we need to start scheduling out renovations because we are managing almost 20 projects at the same time. It's a lot. We're wrapping up a few. But yeah, mean, shout out to Matt. He's getting pictures. Shout out to Ryu. Shout out to Hannah.
Nick (35:08)
I've actually heard all of our contractors are afraid of Hana, which is what I like to hear. We have, I think, six teams from Asahikawa to Otaru, like that kind of general region. We have landscape architects. We have two different teams that install saunas, which is pretty fun. And one of the things that Derek talks about being a huge boost to Airbnb. So yeah, I mean.
Nick (35:34)
That's essentially the whole renovation. And every week we try to get pictures at the very least every two weeks. We've done, we've replaced roofs. We've replaced radiant heating and floors. We have built like whole gardens, mostly like artificial stuff. Some living things, but you know, it's Hokkaido. We've never done a heated driveway. I want to. We have a couple of clients asking about it.
grant (35:54)
Have you done any heated driveways?
Nick (36:01)
I've seen a couple like robots too that are like heated robots and they're almost like a Roomba but outdoor. That's pretty cool. Yeah, our client.
Derek (36:06)
I've seen that. And and we're
grant (36:07)
That's cool. I saw
grant (36:09)
I saw a Roomba lawnmower the other day at the golf course. I had never seen one of those before.
Derek (36:13)
Yeah, I've seen those. And we're gonna
Nick (36:13)
I've never seen that.
Derek (36:15)
have our first traditional Kominka renovation, hopefully soon happening in Iyama. So a lot of people ask us if we've done those. We haven't yet, but one is on the schedule.
Nick (36:26)
Yeah, I would say the majority of our renovations are Japanese, Japan-y plus Western influence. So, it's interesting to have contractor's perspective, our perspective as Americans and people who want to rent, then Hana, our interior designer. Cool thing about her, she grew up in Europe, or she grew up in Japan, parents, family from Europe.
Nick (36:52)
went to school in Hawaii, so she has like this cool organic brutalism style. Our coffee shop might look sort of like that. We're kind of leaving it up to her to be like her dream shop look and scenario. So I'm pretty excited for that. And then yeah, like the whole Japanese influence. So I think it's cool. There's some new stuff that our contractors have been doing that they hadn't done in the past for other people. So it's nice to like actually be heard when.
Nick (37:19)
us or a client wants something. And yeah, our teams are working together pretty well. Okay, so to be finished with renovations, you want me to move on to say like tax utility management. So, okay, this is probably a shorter one, but it is super, super beneficial. When we bought our house and we wanted to get the water turned on, we did not know what to do. And we didn't speak fluent enough Japanese to just call the water company.
grant (37:30)
Yeah. Move on.
Nick (37:48)
So we have an entire team dedicated. Yeah, no, we got there. It was turned on, but the hot water wasn't turned on because they didn't know that our house needed kerosene to heat the hot water heater. So yeah, it was a mess. We got to Hokkaido, it was 30 degrees outside, two days of traveling. All I wanted to do is take a hot shower and it was, the water was freezing. It was the temperature of the snow.
Derek (37:50)
And it wasn't turned on, if you remember.
Derek (37:57)
Yeah, yeah.
Derek (38:00)
Mm-hmm.
Derek (38:10)
Yeah.
Derek (38:15)
Yeah.
Nick (38:16)
Yeah, it was not ideal.
Derek (38:17)
And I have tattoos, so I couldn't go to any of the onset to even clean myself. So it's it it was not fun.
grant (38:21)
Yeah.
Nick (38:24)
Yeah,
Nick (38:24)
so now we have an entire team basically dedicated to that. We charge an annual, it's like a subscription fee of 1,965 USD. That includes the setup and management of all your utilities. We will set everything up. you have water, we'll make sure you have kerosene or propane. Some houses use different.
Nick (38:49)
It depends on the electricity. There's different companies that supply electricity. Obviously location dependent will set up Wi-Fi. Fiber sometimes comes with an additional cost because there is people that have to like go out and install the fiber internet. Certain locations we recommend that. Other locations just like the little home Wi-Fi units are typically good. And then obviously we don't pay your bills for you, but we do. Well, we do pay your bills on your behalf, but we don't like.
Nick (39:17)
you pay for them, it comes out of your wallet.
grant (39:19)
Okay. So what? Is it like in a shared bill pay account?
Nick (39:22)
Yeah, so essentially you'll just transfer us funds via WISE and then we keep a record of the amount that we have and we will pay the bills on your behalf and you have total transparency into all bills. So we have a website, you can't like log in unless you're our client and you've paid for this, but it's called mail.yukihomes.com. Every piece of mail that comes to your house, that's like a utility bill, water bill, HOA fee, et cetera, we'll take a photo of, we scan it.
Nick (39:50)
and it gets uploaded. And then we also translate it so you can see. So we don't add anything to like the amount of the bill. We just pay the bill on your behalf and then you have full insight. You get a monthly report. Mason is our kind of like the guy who does all the invoicing and manages those accounts. So he sends you out a report. Yeah, we, we definitely like, I hated that that was hidden from me. So I assume other people would and
Derek (40:09)
Full transparency, baby.
Nick (40:19)
Yeah, you have like total transparency into all the bills. Obviously, like it could be a couple days delayed. We're not like scanning the bills the second they come in, but you you have transparency and you have confidence that like your electricity isn't just gonna get shut off in the middle of winter because I was afraid that that was gonna happen to us. I actually thought it would. Okay, any questions on the utilities or something I didn't cover? I guess taxes too.
Derek (40:41)
No, that was perfect.
grant (40:42)
Now that.
Nick (40:43)
We don't pay any like income tax if we're actually managing your rental, but
Nick (40:47)
we do manage your property tax. often with taxes, you actually have to walk into 7-Eleven sometimes to pay your property taxes. And we have a team that'll do that.
Nick (40:57)
We route the mail to us, just like the exact same way we pay your utilities works the same. Obviously it's a bigger chunk of money. So around that time, you may need to like add funds to your bill pay account. But yeah, we make sure we're on top of all that stuff.
Nick (41:11)
We will and we have, yeah.
Derek (41:11)
And an important thing to note
Derek (41:13)
is that
Derek (41:14)
in two thousand twenty-four, Japan updated its requirements for foreigners. You have to have a tax POC. They weren't really enforcing it, but now with the new prime minister, they are really enforcing it. So we cannot even so before you even close on your house, you have to appoint a tax POC in Japan. And that is someone
Nick (41:24)
April.
Derek (41:34)
Who will pay your taxes for you? They are not responsible if you don't pay them, but it's just a a contact the government can have in case you disappear.
Nick (41:43)
Yeah,
Derek (41:43)
And
Nick (41:43)
in
Nick (41:43)
April of 2026 is when they actually started like locking that down. So that's when our judicial scrivener started requiring it and basically any sale. We need to make sure we have a tax PSC. So we do have the team happy to do that. But yeah, you're right. Total transparency. That's that was a good call. And then the last one is insurance. Obviously, like we're not insuring your house, but we have insurance companies and based on location, basically, we just have them reach out to you. They help you fill out all the forms.
Nick (42:12)
fairly English friendly and we're obviously here if you have questions. We try to get people to set up their insurance before they settle because it can be like a two to four week process to get the insurance docs in place and paid and all that. And you know, like we have, this is a bummer story, but we have had someone's pipe burst from the freezing water and we had to replace their whole first floor flooring.
Nick (42:39)
So, know, stuff happens and their house wasn't insured. So we did have to pay for that. We helped them out a lot because they were one of our early clients and, you know, we were super happy to do that. But yeah, I mean, that's just like one of those things that it's possible to happen. And obviously you want your house to be insured.
grant (42:54)
You were super happy to
grant (42:55)
pay out of pocket for their floor?
Derek (42:57)
Ha ha.
Nick (42:57)
We were
Nick (42:58)
super happy that we were able to pay for it. Yeah. We didn't pay for their whole floor, but we discounted it as much as we could and worked with the contractors as well. We got a new team of contractors in there. Yeah. That was one of those early stories.
Derek (43:00)
Ha ha.
Derek (43:07)
Yeah.
Derek (43:10)
That's like that, you know.
grant (43:12)
Yeah.
Derek (43:12)
Yeah, that's something that I think that we can offer that a lot of people can't, is we have very close relationships with a lot of our contractors and a lot of these people we work with to the point where, you know, if something does go wrong, like we can help you and we can probably get it done at like a much better rate because
Derek (43:31)
They know us, they trust us, and they're not gonna whack us over their head for an issue that happens like that. one other random interesting thing I read today was that if there's an earthquake in Japan and your house gets burned down. So say an earthquake happens, it causes a fire, and your house burns down from the fire, your earthquake insurance does not cover that. Very interesting.
Nick (43:35)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nick (43:52)
Yeah,
Nick (43:53)
no, that's why typically insurance is called fire insurance. So you buy fire insurance is like the norm and then you add earthquake coverage is actually like more traditional. That's what I've seen at least. So that's what's been going on. What did you say right before that?
Derek (44:00)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Derek (44:05)
Yeah.
Derek (44:08)
I was saying that we have very close relationships with these people, so like
Nick (44:09)
yeah, I was
Nick (44:11)
going to say like even for these kitchen and bathroom units, like we are getting manufacturers to discount the price because we're buying so many units. So, you know, you might be paying us a coordination fee, but we are getting some discounts on that that I don't think a lot of people are getting, which is really nice. Same thing with furniture. We do. I guess we didn't really talk about that, but Hannah's awesome and I wish she furnished our house, but
Nick (44:34)
She does full furniture selections room by room and we pick out furniture, make sure it's placed correctly. If you're doing an Airbnb, we'll try to maximize the return based on bedrooms, how many guests that can sleep and stuff like that. We usually don't try to cram beds in places. I just don't think it's the best for a return and no offense, but I don't want eight 20 year olds staying at my house like on the reg.
Derek (44:59)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick (45:01)
We try to set it up for families or people with couples and friends and a more mature crowd, typically.
Derek (45:09)
And
Derek (45:09)
you said you're talking about connections with manufacturers. Doesn't HANA talk to a lot of these manufacturers directly?
Nick (45:16)
Yeah, no, we're talking like literally one-on-one straight to them. Often like our contractors will come back with a quote and it might be a kitchen unit, let's just say, and then we'll actually call the manufacturer and make sure like dimensions and specs are correct. I'll just like, for example, our house, I would have bought different vanities in both of our bathrooms if I had a choice, we did not have a choice. So now.
Derek (45:37)
Mm-hmm.
Derek (45:39)
That sink is
Derek (45:40)
useless.
Nick (45:41)
Yeah, now we, yeah, our sink might be like four inches by six inches. Like it's tiny. So yeah, like that, that's just one example of like more insight into general processes. We now have the option and we have catalogs and we can pick and it's nice.
Derek (45:45)
It's insane.
Derek (45:56)
Yeah. Airbnb licensing, you want to go in on that?
Nick (45:58)
Yeah, okay. To get to the very end of kind of our whole process, we can talk, this is kind of where renovations and Airbnb licensing meet. There are requirements that you need to get your house up to like specific codes for Airbnb eligible. I say Airbnb, but it's simple hotel lodging is the type of RioCon license that we get for your house. And we'll make sure like, required, earthquake proof lighting is in there, if required, obviously typically.
Nick (46:25)
Fire alarms, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide sometimes, exit signs, yeah, like lighting, that sort of thing. Banisters on stairs can sometimes need upgrades or updating, different things like that. So those will be incorporated into your renovation cost if you want to plan on renting out your house. And then we do charge a separate fee. It's just a super administrative, like red tape heavy process. Our fee, I think is $3,750.
Derek (46:30)
Exit signs.
Nick (46:53)
to basically coordinate licensing, coordinate health inspection to come out, fire inspection team to come out, sometimes multiple times. We do wanna make sure like rugs and curtains are fireproof. I feel like there's kind of a lot that goes on behind the scenes there that I don't necessarily think is right for this episode right now, but just so you know, yeah, yeah, just so you know, that kind of like caps off the whole process and then.
Derek (47:14)
We'll dive into it on like a next episode.
Nick (47:20)
Let's say your house is ready to go. That includes like us taking photos, listing the property. takes, you know, man hours to do all these things. We listed on, I think it's like 12 to 15 popular rental websites. Rio, sorry, Rakuten Travel is like a typical kind of local travel. Singaporeans use that as well. And then Airbnb, VRBO, you know, you name it, kind of Google Travel, the normal ones. Grants our Lister right now.
Derek (47:44)
Grant's gonna be the master at all that.
Nick (47:48)
And we'll probably have like Japanese and English translated listings. And then, yeah, we charge 25 % of gross rental revenue to rent your house. We typically give 45 days of like blackout owner stay days. We work with people on that. Just depends on like what they plan to use their property on, how they wanna do it. And it's definitely worth mentioning like every single property that we've sold that we plan to help people rent, we go to the neighbor's houses.
Nick (48:15)
We talk with them, we give them multiple contacts so that if anything does happen, if we need to do something in the community, if renters are being rude or disrespectful, like we get them out immediately, we fix issues immediately. We really like don't want to disturb the communities or the neighborhoods. That's like the number one priority when we're renting these places. We have separate contracts and separate agreements that we send guests to make sure they know like, hey, community and neighborhood comes first. You need to respect Japan and like
Nick (48:43)
cultural norms. And yeah, like if you are disobeying these, we're going to get you out. So we just want to make sure guests know that and people who are buying or using us to manage know that because it's not really all about just like maximizing return. It's really about giving back to the community and making sure, you know, people are getting to experience Japan, but they're doing it in the right
Derek (49:02)
For sure.
grant (49:03)
All right guys. Well thanks for tuning in. Drop us a like, drop us a follow, and we'll see you next week.
Derek (49:08)
Later guys.