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I bought an apartment in Kobe today!
How did you do it? To be honest I didn’t do any of it. I just went to work and my wife saved the money and found the apartment. But isn’t it difficult to get a loan as a foreigner in Japan? Yes, if you don’t have permanent residence. Actually, you can’t buy one if you don’t. I applied for my permanent residence after 3 years. It took me about 5 months after that to receive it. It was a fairly painless ordeal. With residency in hand, my wife was off to the real estate agencies. We used Step in Okamato. No. They don’t speak English but you can find some rental listings in English around the area. What’s the process? The agent faxed us a flyer listing. My wife thought it was cheap and checked it out. She liked it. Told me about it. I said buy it. We looked at it together, I said buy it again. She asked me questions, I said buy it. Then she asked her friends, I said … you guessed it. I just wanted to buy something as soon as possible since the housing prices in Japan are rock bottom. So the real estate agent came over a few days later after looking at the place. I didn’t understand a thing. They spoke in Japanese and I just kept working on the computer. When they needed my signature I just told my wife to sign for me. So sad. I don’t know what I am getting myself into. I do know that MY name is going to be on the deed. Scary. Once we signed the contracts (one being that if this doesn’t go through and a problem arises that we loose our deposit.) Ouch. $12,000! or something like that. Remember, it’s all in Japanese. So a week later, yesterday, we went to the real estate agency to sign our lives away. I THINK the loan went through and we are a go with this but I’m still a little … hell … a lot hazy on the details. The owner and the agent were present. They went through so many details. I just sat their practicing how to sign my name in katakana. マッケイ マイケル ダグラス．
After about two hours they finally gave the papers to sign–7 of them. I signed. He took the money. We got a pretty bag full of loan papers to fill out and we were on our way. We don’t move in until December. I’ll post more about it later. |
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Anki - Studying Japanese - Motivation:
What's goin' on....:
16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn:
Is it worth it to go to Japan?:
Podcast Episode #87:
Podcast Episode #86:
Staying focused in Japan:
I'm my wife's guarantor:
Podcast Episode #85: