Was told by a friend that you have to go through a company to do it, as in you cant just rent some tools and do it yourself. And it’s not cheap to have done. This is why many houses that are pretty much worthless, but the land is still valuable still wont sell when the asking price is the cost of the land. The new owner would have to come out of pocket for demolition costs, since the banks wont lend for that. Hence the seller usually has the house demolished and the land sells pretty quickly after that.. or maybe a construction company comes in and buys everything and does the demolition themselves because they can do it at cost and make it up when they build/sell the new house. Again, this is all just what I’ve been told.
“it’s not worth the costs unless you own the land already and have spare money to spend on the house.”
While I can usually understand a lot of rules and regulations that Japan has, this one is pretty silly to me. I should be able to just rent a dumpster or two, and as long as I separated what needed to be separated.. I should be able to take a sledge hammer and a few giant power saws to a house I own and demolish it on my own. Maybe someone will chime in and say that I can, but again, just what I’ve been told from friends who have bought/built houses here, that it’s not that simple.
We had the cost of razing the house built into the cost of buying the land.
The builders did it along with ground levelling, soil survey, etc.
Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings are very expensive to tear down. When hunting for property in Tokyo a few years back we got a quote to tear down a old 3 story RC building (about 200sqm total size): 10M JPY. We asked the seller for this discount off the asking price but they refused.
I did it. Just find a house builder you would like to go with and let them handle everything. Surely you are not thinking of doing it yourself?
One possible hitch to be aware of is street access. There are old wooden houses that are still standing (my old boss renovated one) because they were built with the old style of packing houses together on narrow alleys, while current laws require houses to have a certain width of street access for fire safety. In that case you could tear down the old place and then not be allowed to build anything on the land.
My neighbor knocked down a house and was peer-pressured to have a priest come over to bless the land before construction began
I’m in the wrong business
We bought the land with the intention of destroying the “Silent motherfucking Hill looking” house. Construction company tore it down.
We paid for a Shinto priest to come bless the land, because there are a lot of elderly in the neighborhood and wanted to get on their good graces/start out on a good foot. It actually did work, and even though we didn’t have the house built and moved into for a few months, when we met the neighbors they were all cheerfully talking about us getting the blessing done in a positive light. So that was a nice “Gaijin, but One Of Us Now” move.
We built a house through Ichijo Komuten, one to last for 3 generations/guaranteed for at least 75+ years. We’re on the side of “changing the historic pattern of single-generation houses”. 20-30+ years ago it was very rare. Nowadays there are a LOT of people building (and selling) multi-generation houses, buying them, etc.
Love Ichijo Komuten (particularly i-Smart): We have never had to turn on heat once in all the 5+ winters we’ve lived here. Fluid-run floor heating, 2-3 pane xenon glass, and tight insulation control is really something incredible.
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Cons: Asbestos
Was told by a friend that you have to go through a company to do it, as in you cant just rent some tools and do it yourself. And it’s not cheap to have done. This is why many houses that are pretty much worthless, but the land is still valuable still wont sell when the asking price is the cost of the land. The new owner would have to come out of pocket for demolition costs, since the banks wont lend for that. Hence the seller usually has the house demolished and the land sells pretty quickly after that.. or maybe a construction company comes in and buys everything and does the demolition themselves because they can do it at cost and make it up when they build/sell the new house. Again, this is all just what I’ve been told.
“it’s not worth the costs unless you own the land already and have spare money to spend on the house.”
While I can usually understand a lot of rules and regulations that Japan has, this one is pretty silly to me. I should be able to just rent a dumpster or two, and as long as I separated what needed to be separated.. I should be able to take a sledge hammer and a few giant power saws to a house I own and demolish it on my own. Maybe someone will chime in and say that I can, but again, just what I’ve been told from friends who have bought/built houses here, that it’s not that simple.
We had the cost of razing the house built into the cost of buying the land.
The builders did it along with ground levelling, soil survey, etc.
Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings are very expensive to tear down. When hunting for property in Tokyo a few years back we got a quote to tear down a old 3 story RC building (about 200sqm total size): 10M JPY. We asked the seller for this discount off the asking price but they refused.
I did it. Just find a house builder you would like to go with and let them handle everything. Surely you are not thinking of doing it yourself?
One possible hitch to be aware of is street access. There are old wooden houses that are still standing (my old boss renovated one) because they were built with the old style of packing houses together on narrow alleys, while current laws require houses to have a certain width of street access for fire safety. In that case you could tear down the old place and then not be allowed to build anything on the land.
My neighbor knocked down a house and was peer-pressured to have a priest come over to bless the land before construction began
I’m in the wrong business
We bought the land with the intention of destroying the “Silent motherfucking Hill looking” house. Construction company tore it down.
We paid for a Shinto priest to come bless the land, because there are a lot of elderly in the neighborhood and wanted to get on their good graces/start out on a good foot. It actually did work, and even though we didn’t have the house built and moved into for a few months, when we met the neighbors they were all cheerfully talking about us getting the blessing done in a positive light. So that was a nice “Gaijin, but One Of Us Now” move.
We built a house through Ichijo Komuten, one to last for 3 generations/guaranteed for at least 75+ years. We’re on the side of “changing the historic pattern of single-generation houses”. 20-30+ years ago it was very rare. Nowadays there are a LOT of people building (and selling) multi-generation houses, buying them, etc.
Love Ichijo Komuten (particularly i-Smart): We have never had to turn on heat once in all the 5+ winters we’ve lived here. Fluid-run floor heating, 2-3 pane xenon glass, and tight insulation control is really something incredible.