Home Loan for Non-PR, Inaka Edition

6 comments

1. I’ve been fighting this. Shinsei (and presumably also Prestia) require it be in the city planning area as well which nothing I look at has been.

   Prestia: built after 1981 (technically, design approved with the 1981 earthquake standards, but that’s unprovable in many cases so they use the build date) and 20% down required.

   Shinsei: there’s a chance we could do an older building, but it’s very unlikely. It would need to be in the city planning area and would require a bigger down payment.

   I haven’t tried SMBC (my normal bank) for any of the properties I looked at yet because the one I *really* wanted waitlisted me behind some other folks. They did say my wife could apply but her income alone is almost nothing so I’m not sure.

   Some users noted that their bank said they “hadn’t been PR long enough” in another thread so it may not be an immediate solution.

   I asked in /r/japanfinance about a personal, unsecured loan from family abroad and that is doable. They suggested at least 1% interest with regular payments to make sure it isn’t a gift that’s pretending to be a loan.

   Good luck in any case.

2. You probably won’t be able to do it unless you can find a Japanese national who would be willing to sign on as a loan guarantor.

3. Why are you paying to use a lawyer but don’t want to pay a real estate broker? I wonder if you are actually saving money and getting the best advice. So many people end up on Reddit asking for help because they think a realtor is just someone who searches for properties for you. In Japan lawyers are rare and expensive because the actual legal work is offloaded onto a lot of other occupations.

   Real estate brokers are experts on real estate law AND they have detailed knowledge of bank terms, as well as connections to various banks they have worked with in the past. Also, from the bank’s point of view, if you have a buyer’s agent advising you you are less likely to choose a problem property or money pit. Buyers without agents tend to be stubborn in trying to buy something and then transform it into something that cannot be done, physically or legally.

4. I got my home loan in August through SMBC, no PR and my partner is not Japanese. I started the process by walking into a Mitsui fudousan office located in the area I was interested in buying a house in, and the agent helped me fill out the application on their app to see how much the bank would offer.

   Two weeks later the agent called and said SMBC were willing to give me a loan, however one condition was required and that my partner and I get married and live in the same address. We were already planning to do so AFTER I get the loan, so we did it. The whole process took from May till August and couldve been shorter, but some documents needed we had to bring from our home countries and that took some time.

5. I got my home loan through Roukin. They are foreigner friendly and were easy to work with. As others have said, you should have a real estate broker. Mine handle almost everything and help with all the paperwork I had to do.

6. You need to wait till you have a PR (unless you are chinese or only buying an investment property, different rules for both). Prestia told me in the same situation that they might give me a loan but only at 2.5%. not the .5% everyone else gets. If I had a PR it would be .5%.

   It’s simply not viable to be single and an owner occupier till you have a PR.