I havent read anything on here about buying a house but my wife and I have just pulled the trigger on a house in Meguro - ku !
I tell you what a mission and experience it has been - there are countless hours of agent meetings - I feel like I have copied several hundred pages of kanji encrypted agreements !
The thing is we are still waiting for the mortgage to be approved - only one of the thirteen banks the agent appplied to on our behalf wants to know us!
If we get knocked I`m not certain what the next step will be to be honest
anyway if anyone is interested I will share more details below and always keen to hear other peoples experiences/ opinions re japan real estate-

You WANT to live in Tokyo?

Congrats

Be prepared to write your name and address lots more times when you get your mortgage!

What rate are they offering you? We got ours a few months ago, but it looks like the rate has gone up since then. Ours is a 20 year mortgage, fixed for 10 years at 1.85%.

First the dog, now a house...pitter patter of tiny feet about to come?!

Mate you want to talk to Chris about it, he got just bought his recently and would know about it. Also Mick has a mortgage after buying last year.

Looking forward to the house warming!!

Wow 1.85%? Man I should of organised a loan when I lived there. The current rate here at most banks for a home loan is about 8.8%.

that is exactly the same package that we are going for Wiggles-
How stressful is all the shit you have to go through - anyway hopefully it will be worth it - I have been doing a fair bit of reading on the subject most content is reasonably bullish at least in the short term -
Farquah yeah the dog is buying me some timein the meantime ! She@s a handful !-

Good to hear we inaka people aren't getting ripped compared to you urban folks! We initially tried to get public financing through something called the kin'yu koukou but the representative changed halfway through and the second bloke was a swine. If you can get it, I think the fees are much lower than a bank loan. The interest is pretty much the same at the mo.

Congratulations and I hope you can pull it off. A mate of mine bought in Senganchaya (sp?) near Shibuya and has a great deal compared to renting. Their quality of life has really improved.

As for Japanese interest rates, you get bugger all for saving here, so you might as well be a borrower!

What sort of hoops do you need to jump through though as a foreigner to borrow here? I thought it was nigh on impossible for us terrible, swindling Gaijin to get a loan/mortgage etc

yes, it would be for a scot.

Those rates sure are low!

If only we got a whopping 1.85% when 'saving' here, instead of the usual 0.000005% or whatever ridiculous rate it is.