Genuinely curious what the reason for this might be?
For example, I don’t have PR but make good money, own property, have a career here, lived here for \~ 5 years and I cannot find anyone to give me a loan. I know it’s the same thing in many other countries but what’s the logic behind it? Does something change when you get a PR, ie you’re easier to find in other countries or something?
I mean it’s not \*that\* hard to get a PR, and if I skipped the country, could the bank not just seize my assets and recoup the money.
If someone was going to pull off this level of fraud I don’t think PR status would stop them?
One bank actually asked me to come in to assess my situation, I insisted I didn’t have a PR and they still asked me to come, bring all my paper work payslips etc. When I got there, they just said no because I don’t have a PR. Was quite frustrating but I’m used to this type of things by now 🙂
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It’s simple risk management. Could someone get PR simply to screw over a bank? Sure. But someone who has PR is less likely to “skip country” than someone without.
Banks are pretty easy going with mortgages in Japan. On the most part, they are loaning money with very low interest on depreciating assets with no down payment or collateral. It makes sense to reduce risk on such loans as much as possible.
Flight risk and steady employment.
How can they recoup the money on the assets if the assets depreciate quickly and take a fuckton of work to sell?
Have you tried offering a larger down payment?
Sure, anyone could pull up stakes and hump it overseas – even native Japanese. But it’s kind of hard, not something you could do right away.
PR suggests you’ve built a life here. It’s just an easy proxy to determine who has built a career / family etc here vs who doesn’t have strong roots here and thus could more easily jump overseas. Nothing more, nothing less.
A real estate agent told me probably up until about 15 years ago, there were significant number of short term foreigners acting as proxies for other entities to purchase homes for future investment purposes. The PR requirement was kind of used to sort of weed out those people.
I was told by Prestia that they would do a mortgage for non-PR me but it would require 20% down
I mean, it seems incredibly obvious why they only offer it for PR holders. Compared to abroad, lending money here is incredibly cheap. They are getting what? 1.5% even after all the crap happening in the world – doesn’t sound like it’s worth taking on any risk at all for the banks.
Having PR is an indicator that you will be here long term, thus you are a lower risk. If you’re just here on a visa your long-term prospects are more uncertain.
We got a house loan through MUFG before we had PR, so they don’t only loan to PR holders.