TL;DR – live in Kanagawa, married to Japanese wife, two-year-old kid, an amazing deal popped up and we pre-qualified for the loan and looking for best practices, tips, and an overview of what I’d be looking at paying in taxes etc.
Details:
Let’s say the home is 50M JPY, and we’re going to take the whole value out on loan with a 0.29% variable with upfront costs of 2.2% of the mortgage value. My income conservatively fluctuates between 8M – 11M JPY per annum. Wife is around 3M JPY per annum (***so assume total of 11 – 14M JPY***). We can put a downpayment of 10%, but we were pre-approved with no downpayment, so probs will go that route.
Main Questions:
I feel like with the fluctuating income, it’s really girigiri to make the payments, but maybe I’m being overly cautious? Based on folks’ experience and knowledge, ***i******s the home and mortgage realistic with current income?*** What other taxes and things should I consider when finalizing the property? Any “folks always forget” items that I should take note of? Aside from mortgage calculators, are there any Japan-property pruchasing calculators that also take into account annual income and expected taxes and average home expenses/repairs?
I’ve done some Googling and Reddit searching, but nothing really gave me confidence in my decision-making. I’m pretty novice in all this, so if something doesn’t make sense or I’m not asking the right questions, I apologize. Here to learn!
Thanks in advance <3
​
6 comments
Bro 50m at 0.29% is like, 130000 yen a month. Around 10% of your gross household income. That should be completely trivial, like it could triple and you should still be able to pay alright. Property taxes should be <250000 for the year and more or less completely offset by your home loan deduction (住宅ローン控除).
Basically if you’re worried about paying this mortgage on that income, then you two have to be so bad at budgeting and spending that you would have far bigger problems to worry about.
Unless it’s a 5 year loan or something, you should have no problem paying it back, even if it was 15 years you’d be paying like 30% of your income towards the mortgage.
You got approved right away because if you were both Japanese, you’d probably be approved for close to 100M with that income.
Are you paying rent now, and is this a 30year loan? If so, this seems like a win.
You can buy a home in Japan for like 50k? Holy crap
Given 0.29% is variable, I’d consider the possibility of the rate going up.
Where are you getting a .29% rate? Going through this at the moment and the best we (my wife – I work remote for an offshore) can get us around .7%.