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I'd like to buy a house in Okinawa...

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Willard Boyd

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I've noticed a few of you mentioned buying a house in a few of the threads. I'm living in Texas right now, but I'd really like to buy a retirement home in Okinawa now and start making payments on it. Which means I won't even be able to move out there until 12 years from now. Any advice from those of you who've had to jump through these hoops? My wife is an Okinawan girl, so I have in-laws there, but they aren't well off. I've got a respectable down payment and steady work (I'm in the US Army). I appreciate any help you can throw my way. W Boyd
 
Willard...by respectable downpayment, I hope you mean 30% of the cost of the house (not including land). Assuming you want a decent sized home (70-80 tsubos for a family of 2) you'll need around $200k for a house, so around $60K for the downpayment. If you need land, it will cost a little more. Many people here rent the land long term (say 20-30 years). I personally don't plan to go that route. I plan to purchase the land and build the house all at the same time! Have your in-laws talk to Tokuzato housing. They specialize in building homes for families like yours. If you shoot me a PM, I'll tell you some more. There are some ways for you to save some money. What area of Okinawa is your wife from? Were you at Torii before?
 
Buying a house in Japan

It is my understanding that in order to buy a house in Japan, you must be of Japanese heritage (or married to someone of Japanese heritage). Is this a correct statement?
 
Not entirely...there are ways around it. Willard if you are still interested, send me a PM and lets see what we can do.
 

is that about the price of house in Okinaway? 200k sounds like a good deal.
 
Doctor P ,I am only going to share my experience with you here so please take it as that. First I will say that I have bought and own a house here in Japan.

I do think that you have underestimated the price of a house by a little bit. If you go off current trends, they( housing companies) do the math by multiplying a "tsubo/坪"(I am explaining like this for the OP BTW) which is about 3.3m/sq or 35 ft/sq by a certain amount of money which is decided by what plans and materials you end up using.

This price ranges from about 400,000yen/$3,700 US to anything up and over 1,000,000yen/$9200 US. Going off these figures you would be looking at least $300,000 K US just for the house and this would be a very ordinary house, you would be looking at much more if you change around the plans too much.
One of my staff recently built a house with a cheap but big company here (Sekisui House) and it was about 35 tsubo/1225ft sq/115m sq and that cost them $240,000 US just for the house. The land cost them $100,000 US for 30 tsubo of land/1,200ft sq.

Now for land, the average price in Okinawa is about $3,000 US for one tsubo and if you were going to build a house that was 80 Tsubo you would need at least 100 tsubo of land, now do the math, you will need close to $300,000 US for that much land. Sure you will find cheaper places , but not much cheaper.

Add them both up and you are looking at over $600,000-$700,000 for a house that big (80 tsubo) if you skiped all luxuries. Of corse if you built a house that had a few nice luxuries like inbuilt air conditioners ect, it will easily go over the 1 mil mark.

Just some food for though.

@Willard Boyd, can you give me specifics as I know I can help you out on a few things.

Dave
 
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I forgot to say that the average size of a house by floor is about 121m sq/1,300ft sq. 80 tsubo is huge by Japanese standards.
 
the best thing about building a house in japan, is the low interest rate. A person i know is paying like 3.5%. For a $300,000 loan, thats only $10,500, probably cheaper than what you would be paying for rent.
 
Sergeant Boyd last visited us in August, 2005.

Junjun, you have an uninformed view of how the interest rate works. It isn't 3.5% of the total amount of the loan.

I just used my bank's (Gunma Bank) online home mortgage calculator to run the numbers on a 30 million yen mortgage at 3.5% over 30 years:

Monthly payments: 134,713
Yearly payments: 1,616,556
Total repayments: 48,496,680

That 3.5% is an annual percentage rate.

By way of comparison, at 3.4% the total repayments would be 47,895,840......a difference roughly half a million yen. Under your math it would be a difference of three hundred bucks.
 
Dave thanks for the post. I think you forget that I am in Okinawa and not mainland Japan. The price per tsubo is not anywhere what you posted. I can buy land here anywhere between $500 to $2,000/tsubo depending upon location and whether it is ready for construction or not.
 
Wow Doctor P, that is cheap! I doN7t want to tell you how much we paid for our land.
 
Sad thing is that I have land that would be mine (MIL) if I moved up there to Kanagawa...but I'm not ready to work on the Japanese economy (yet) so it sits there in waiting. If I would make the move, I could build a house anytime.
 


yeah. sorry i was very vague uninformative in my post.

Personally when buying a house, the most important thing is the yearly interest reate compared to the rent expense. In the U.S. it is close to 7%, and thus, with simple math, $500k value house in south california would have to pay $35,000/year in interest only. You can probably rent the same house at $24,000 per year. Thus, it is more financially sound to rent the house and save up the extra $10,000 until you can save up enough to virtually buy the house outright.

In japan however, interest rate is still low enough for the home purchase to be much better investment than rent-and-save.

In retrospect, U.S. savings bond is like what... betwee 4 or 5 percent. Which means that the banks are lending home buyers at a lower rate than what they can get from purchasing the simple government bonds in the U.S..

Basically 30 year 130,000 payment for 30,000,000 loan is a great deal.
 

Actually Doc there are places here in Okinawa that one can purchase land for $50 per tsubo. 5,000 yen.

Plus one other thing, the average land amount bought here for buying a house is now roughly 50 tsubo and not 70 to 80.
 
DoctorP said:
I'm going more for 90 to 100 tsubo myself.
Click to expand...
I dont blame you either, just remember that over time the cost you will pay in taxes is going to be pretty expensive. I hope you are rich enough to cover them as well.
 
Please don't misunderstand me...I was speaking land size, not house size. I am not one to have a house with only 3 ft of land on either side of it! I need room to breathe, and space for a few trees!
 
DoctorP said:
Please don't misunderstand me...I was speaking land size, not house size. I am not one to have a house with only 3 ft of land on either side of it! I need room to breathe, and space for a few trees!
Click to expand...
Yeah... I am the same, thats why we got a nice big piece of land here in mainland Japan. We have a nice garden ,which I like too.
 
I personally would love to thank you guys for putting up this info. In a few years from now I plan to be moving to Japan for working with young kids and since I do plan on staying in the country for as long as possible I want to see if I can buy a home at some point..lol yes I pretty much mean save up for one. But I don't know anything about ends and outs of buying a house so the info you guys are giving is great and I just wanted to say thanks. lol since is the first time I have seen actual helpful information on the subject.
 
living in Okinawa

Hi everyone,
I have recently accepted a position in Okinawa. I have a minimum 2 year requirement. My wife and I do not have any affiliation with the Okinawan heritage. Does anyone have any recommendations for us in finding a place to live (renting or purchasing)? I will be working at Kadena.
Thanks!
 

Who are you with? Dodds or a contractor? Plus is there a housing allowance in your contract?

Off the top I would suggest renting as it is only for two years, the difficulties that you would have to go through buying here, particularly as a newcomer would probably not be worth it.
 
I'm a contractor with L-3 Communications. We do get a housing allowance. So you recommend renting. I see they have houses and apartments. Is there a big difference in size/price comparison between the two?
 
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