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.