Sorry for the long post, I thought it's important to give my reasoning.
Also someone just made a similar post. But this one is about real estate as sole investment.
Mine isn't about this, only as a best case scenario outcome.
So I hope it's okay I'm posting this so shortly after the other one.
Tl;Dr: does it make sense to become a landlord in Japan?
According to Gemini I'm upper middle class income. I have 100k rent/month. Just moving this expense from a total "loss" to a payoff for a house loan. It seems I could pay off a new house in e.g. Saitama countryside in ~20 to 25 years.
Problems already start here. I'm not sure this is the key ready price with owning the land, as my Japanese is still limited, which makes investigations difficult.
If true this seems great and I'd love to live there.
But I'm now on 3 days in office and already take 1:30h to office one way. And it's likely we need to go back fully soon.
From where houses are cheap it's at least 2, if not 3 hours. Impossible!
Now I can gamble on getting a full remote job or to be able to negotiate at least a once per week. But I don't think so.
At the end I'm sitting on this property which I can't use, need to rent or sell. But hardly anyone wants it because it's so far. I guess that's why they are so cheap. I wonder if they are subsidized to get people to live there.
I don't want to live in Tokyo central and it's freaking expensive anyway.
Long story short, I don't see myself owning my own house before retirement. (unless there are major changes/developments)
Now I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to become a landlord.
It would be best case scenario if the rent eventually pays off the loan and then continues to cover running costs (maintenance, fees, possible rebuild) and leave some income. But I find it rather unlikely.
I would do this for two reasons:
- have an apartment secured for myself
- sell the (mostly) land with a profit (hopefully) upon retirement, then by my own house somewhere countryside.
I think everything will only furthermore concentrate around Tokyo (and other bigger cities). Which will increase property value even in outer areas, because nobody can afford even Tokyo area.
I'd buy a bigger land in walking distance to a station which currently is under developed. And then wait until it's getting developed over the years. I see this already happening alongside Tsukuba express line for example.
Now I'm thinking about 6 better 8 to 12 units (to cover vacancy) with a parking space.
Then later if it's developed, hopefully an investor is willing to even pay off the loan just to get the land. So they can use the larger land, remove the parking and build a higher rise building there.
Again not sure if I found proper info but it seems I need to expect to pay at least 100 million. From what I gathered I also need to expect to have ~10% of this to get the loan.
I have this barely now. If things continue as is, I could double that amount in ~5 years.
Well given my trouble with Japanese I wonder how feasible all of this is.
I need a housing company and agent due to the language "barrier" which will incur extra cost too.
I'm clear this isn't for investment. For this I want to invest salary separately.
The house should pay off from rent alone. Only in case of problems like COVID period or disaster I would want to compensate with salary.
Trying to figure if it makes sense at all to invest the time, money and effort. So far I have no clue. Is renting and solely investing my salary much more viable, even if finding an apartment might be troublesome.
I wonder about your experience. Especially those who went down that road.
Thanks a lot for those that read this far and your input!
by Gamer40plus