Search tools - finding a property or piece of land

If you are just getting started in your search for a piece of land or property, it's likely that the bulk of your time is going to be spent trawling through 3 main websites. They are SUUMO (www.suumo.jp), Lifull Homes (www.homes.co.jp) and At Home (www.athome.co.jp).

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages so I will run through a few things that we have realised about each below.

Firstly, if you are not a Japanese speaker, you will likely have to familiarise yourself with some useful words and phrases so you know where to look. Knowing these will help you to search more effectively on the site and also to filter and sort results. Here's a brief list of useful ones to know:

House (一戸建て)
Flat/apartment (マンション)
Land (土地)
Building (建物)
New (新しい)
Old (中古）
Year and month (年月)
Type (間取り)
Size (専有面積)
Big (広い)
Small (狭い)
Cheap (安い)
Expensive (高い)
New listings (新者)
Walking (徒歩)
Bus (バス）
Minutes (分)
Station (駅)

Suumo

Suumo is really easy to navigate, even with limited Japanese, and the side bar allows for easy modification of search criteria. It has a map search function although it is pretty rudimentary and limited by the level of address detail within each listing. It is also possible to set up alerts for when new properties within your search criteria become available. These are delivered to your email each morning and work pretty well. One thing to note is that Suumo seems to be more geared towards rentals and there are far fewer land plots available on there in Osaka than on the other sites.

Lifull

Lifull has a really fantastic mapping function that allows you to move effortlessly around, viewing properties that meet your criteria on the map. Again, this is limited by the information in the listing but it is much smoother and more professional than Suumo's version. When you find something you are interested in, you can click on it and a very brief summary appears alongside with a link to the listing if you wish to find out more. I have set up alerts on Lifull but they have not been coming through, which makes this one for browsing only in our case. Note that the top listings with a "PR" are not subject to your sorting criteria but always appear at the top, like sponsored listings with Google.

At Home

At Home has lots of listings although these are often duplicated. It appears to be particularly good for land plots with several appearing only on this site and not on either of the others. There is very limited ability to search using a map function but the list layout is easy to use and the synopsis contains well chosen information. The email alerts system works very well. Note that the top listings with a "PR" are, as with Lifull, not subject to your sorting criteria but always appear at the top.


That's it for now. On the search front, we have found a piece of land that we think is interesting and so we are in the process of making some more enquiries. It was also really great to recently discover a House Building in Japan group on Facebook with one of the members building in an area of Osaka we are strongly considering. The view and the house she is building look stunning, and it's really great to have someone potentially to whom we can ask some questions when we get stuck.

Shijonawate (四條畷市) - Where it all began

Back in July 2016 we went on our first trip to see a house for sale in Japan. It was a relatively spur-of-the-moment decision after some casual perusal online of the various housing portals that exist in Japan (more on that in a later blog).

The house was in a quiet, leafy suburb of Osaka city called Shijonawate. Neither of us had ever been there before but we found it to be relatively well-situated, just 14 minutes from Kyobashi Station on the Katamachi Line. It was, however, quite a trek from the station to the house - a 20 minute uphill walk according to Google Maps. 

Since we were unfamiliar with the area, our friendly English-speaking local estate agent (from whom we found our current rental apartment) offered to take us there by car, which saved us slogging uphill through the summer heat. This afforded plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions on the way. It quickly became apparent that he was as intrigued as we were about this particular property.

Whilst there had been a number of pictures online, it was difficult to really ascertain the scope and scale of the plot and the house atop it. This was made even more difficult due to the fact that the plot was actually one huge piece of land with three properties on it, each crudely demarcated from the others by a line on the plan but, as it would turn out, with no obvious physical boundary in real life.

We were looking at Plot C, which came in under our notional budget and supposedly boasted a whopping 500m2 of land with a 200m2 house in the middle. This is absolutely huge by Japanese standards and the idea of having a garden and outside space was instantly appealing. Beyond the house, there were also two outbuildings, a Kura (蔵) which is a traditional storage space, and a small tea house! Apparently the plot had been used for commercial purposes as a kind of company retreat.

The house was a wooden-structured large rectangle built in a semi-traditional style and made of wood in 1976. This mean that it was built before a major earthquake regulations revision which occurred in 1981. Although the structure appeared to be remarkably sturdy for such an old building (in Japan, 40 years old is an ancient house), both Yuko and I had some concerns about how it would fare should a major earthquake hit.  

Inside, the house had been built and furnished to a very high standard but very little had been done to it in the last 25 years. It was clear to see that the previous owners had spent a lot of money on it initially but that the mod cons installed in the 70s and 80s were no longer fit for purpose. It would have required a complete and costly refit of the entire ground floor, with the upstairs fairing no better.

As we quickly did the Maths in our heads, we could see that this would have proved to be a very expensive undertaking indeed. Furthermore, there were only two rooms upstairs, which would have either necessitated some fairly quirky living arrangements or a large scale extension and renovation of the upper floor.

Outside, things were considerably better. The tea-house would have made for the most wonderful guesthouse and was already replete with running water and electricity. The front could have easily been opened up to provide an outside deck and it would have been such a unique and fantastic space for visitors to stay.  

Equally amazing was the garden which extended all around the house in a semi-traditional Japanese style. The garden was complete with beautiful trees, rock formations and a large wooden water wheel. The previous owner had set up an elaborate system of pipes and pumps so that water could be pumped around the garden but no doubt the hassle of keeping it operating resulted in his admitting defeat. When we visited the house we could see the pipes but, alas, no water except for that coming from the fast-flowing river behind the house.

As we sat on the bench outside the the genkan (玄関),  a traditional Japanese house entrance, sipping tea kindly provided by the enthusiastic seller's agent, we imagined ourselves living in this Ghibli-esque environment. We opted to walk to the station (downhill) to see the local area and mull over our first impressions. We both loved what we thought the place could be like and, in particular, the tea house and the garden. Shijonawate seemed like an interesting, albeit quiet neighbourhood and the train connection into town was great.

However, the walk to the station was a long 20 minutes in the summer heat and would have been nightmarish in the other direction. We were glad to find our estate agent waiting at the station, AC running on full blast to take us back to the city.

After a couple of days, we made our decision not to proceed with the Ghibli house. It was simply going to be too much work and there were too many other reasons to say no, not least the fact that this was the first house we had been to see. Nevertheless, it proved to be a worthwhile and fulfilling experience and has acted as a catalyst to our current search. I'm sure someone will be very happy living there - it just wasn't quite for us.

The large garden with wooden water wheel.

The tea house.

A traditional tatami living room with wood and paper panel doors.

The house had a urinal! Complete with strange stone foot wells.

The kitchen was a luxury setup in its day but it hasn't aged well. The large oven is an expensive luxury in Japan.

The most modern addition to the house - an onsen style shower room with window to the outside world.

The main hallway off which all the rooms are situated.

The parking space below the Kura storage area.

The house and its beautiful surroundings.

Welcome

Hello everyone. Konnichiwa. Welcome to our blog.

It's always hard to know where to start with these things, but here goes. We are Tom and Yuko and we have decided to build a house in Osaka, Japan. Well, sort of.

At present, we live in a perfectly nice, modern but small, rented apartment in the centre of Osaka, close to a raft of fantastic restaurants, bars and convenient transport links. We are both in our late twenties and working in the centre of the city.

Sounds great right? It really is, and we're not ready to give it up just yet, but what we both yearn for is more space. Space that just cannot be found in the centre of the city unless you are a Hedge Fund Manager or you happen to own a park. Space to have a barbecue in the summer without fear of setting the neighbour's apartment on fire. Space to sit outside without having to reposition all of the washing on the balcony. Space to cure and smoke bacon on an industrial scale. Space to perhaps work or run a business from home. Space for some kids to run around in. Perhaps even a dog, cat, hamster.

It's with space in mind that we started looking at properties to purchase about 9 months ago. That search has subsequently morphed into visiting predominantly land plots with a view to building our own house. Although this blog will feature any existing properties that we look at, we have set it up with the intention of telling our story of building a house in Japan. If we end up buying a house rather than building one, this will be a rather short blog indeed!

At any rate, we hope that you will enjoy reading this (Mum) and that we are able to shed some light on the process for any other foreigners or mixed couples who may consider building or buying a house in Japan.



PS: For anyone interested in reading the stories of others who have done the same, I highly recommend checking out https://catforehead.com/, http://kichijojilife.blogspot.jp/, http://japanhouseblog.tumblr.com/ and https://gaijinhouse.wordpress.com/  all of which have proved to be really informative for us in starting out on this process.