The cost of our Ichijo house
04 May 2025 | #housing | #money | #japanWe are building a house in Tokyo with Ichijo 一条工務店. In a previous post I covered the costs associated with buying the land, and in this post I’ll talk about the cost of our house built by Ichijo. There will be additional fees (e.g. garden, registration, etc.) that I will write about in a separate post once we move in. This post is only about the money we pay to Ichijo for the building itself.
Overview
The final cost of the house was 35,605,326 yen (32,368,479 yen plus the 10% tax). All prices from this point will be without tax (as that’s how they are shown in the estimate).
| Category (jp) | Category (en) | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Ⅰ 建物本体工事御見積書 | Main building construction | 22,165,367 yen |
| Ⅱ 建築申請・その他業務諸費用 | Subsidy applications | 794,000 yen |
| Ⅲ 付帯・屋外給排水・雨水排水・浄化槽・ガス配管工事御見積書 | Outdoor water plumbing work | 1,583,700 yen |
| Ⅳ 標準仕様外工事御見積書 | Various options that we chose | 6,515,112 yen |
| Ⅴ 太陽光発電システム御見積書 | Solar panel and battery | 1,310,300 yen |
| 建物工事費合計(税抜) | Total building construction cost (excluding tax) | 32,368,479 yen |
I will break down each of these categories now.
Main building construction - 22,165,367 yen
This depends on the size of the house, the chosen line-up (GRAND SMART in our case), whether the house has to have a high fire resistance (some areas require this), and when the contract was signed.
Before we signed our contract in January 2024, these were the per tsubo prices for each line-up:
Now, there is a small note on the top left corner: these prices apply for a 30 tsubo (99 m2, 1 tsubo is 3.3 m2) house outside the 23 wards of Tokyo, without special fire resistance, tax included. If the house is smaller, then the per-tsubo price goes up slightly.
Our house is 95.44 m2 (29 tsubo) and we paid 232,244 yen per m2 (766,405 yen per tsubo) for this. Adding the 10% tax to this, the per-tsubo price ends up being 843,046 yen, which is slightly higher than the advertised 823,000 yen. This is likely due to the slightly smaller house, and the time difference (the prices are from November and we signed the contract in January).
During the design phase we considered switching to a cheaper line-up (i-smart), but many of the options that we wanted and were included with GRAND SMART were paid options with i-smart, so in the end we decided to stay with GRAND SMART as the savings would not have been significant.
Subsidy applications - 794,000 yen
Ichijo builds high quality houses with great insulation, so they are eligible for many local and national subsides. Ichijo handles the paperwork to apply for these, but they charge extra for this (however the subsidies should more than offset this cost).
For us they will apply for the followings subsidies:
| Name of the subsidy | Application fee |
|---|---|
| 確認申請･設計住宅性能評価･低炭素申請手続及び諸費用 | 499,000 yen |
| 東京ｾﾞﾛｴﾐ住宅 申請費用 | 210,000 yen |
| 子育てグリーン住宅支援事業 | 85,000 yen |
| Overall | 794,000 yen |
This is a lot, but we are expected to get somewhere between 2 to 3 million yen from the subsidies, so it should work out in the end.
Outdoor water plumbing work - 1,583,700 yen
This is to cover plumbing work outside the house, connecting the house to the water pipe already in the land. Our land was created by halving a bigger land, and the other half got both the existing water and the gas connections, we will have to pay for connecting the land to the water pipes separately (we won’t have gas in the house, so won’t connect that).
| Item (jp) | Item (en) | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 仮設工事 | Temporary Construction | 721,000 yen |
| 屋外給水設備工事 | Outdoor water supply installation work | 219,000 yen |
| 屋外排水設備工事 | Outdoor drainage system construction | 280,900 yen |
| 特別運搬費 | Special transportation fee | 42,000 yen |
| 残土処分費 | Surplus soil disposal costs | 139,000 yen |
| 屋外雨水設備工事 | Outdoor rainwater installation work | 181,800 yen |
| 合計 | Overall | 1,583,700 yen |
Connecting the land to the water pipes will be an additional 1,223,035 yen (tax included), but that is done by a different company, so it is not included in the Ichijo estimate.
Some of this might be due to local regulations (I remember that we have to install a tank for rain water due to a local law, so it might be different elsewhere).
Options that we chose - 6,515,112 yen
This is the biggest additional expense to the house, and where we could have both reduced or increased the costs significantly. In the end we got 63 different options, so I will naming some minor ones, and organize them into the following categories.
| Category | Cost |
|---|---|
| Custom kitchen and cupboard | 1,859,500 yen |
| Equipment upgrades | 1,579,000 yen |
| Walls, floors, and windows | 859,900 yen |
| Smart home | 661,080 yen |
| Things we didn’t ask for | 597,300 yen |
| Lights and electrical stuff | 467,832 yen |
| Storage and laundry poles | 413,700 yen |
| Others | 76,800 yen |
Custom kitchen and cupboard - 1,859,500 yen
I already covered this in an earlier post, but TLDR: we wanted a big, front-open dishwasher, and didn’t really like Ichijo’s kitchen’s design, so ended up getting both the kitchen and the cupboard from WoodOne.
Equipment upgrades - 1,579,000 yen
The base price includes the default equipments (ACs, toilets, water taps, etc.), but we chose to upgrade some of them. For the living room AC this was mandatory in order to qualify for some of the energy efficiency subsidies, the rest was mostly our choice.
| Item | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Air conditioner upgrade | 565,000 yen | This includes high-grade Daikin ACs in all rooms. |
| Sink at the entrance from WoodOne | 366,000 yen | We added an additional sink near the entrance, which would have been an extra option from Ichijo anyway, so we got it from WoodOne, as we preferred their design. (We chose the open-type, but they have unit-type too.) |
| Upgrade both toilets to one that opens automatically and easier to clean | 176,000 yen | Considered Toto’s Neorest a lot, but ended up going with the cheaper Toto GG3 as we didn’t find any feature that would justify the double price of Neorest. |
| Honeycomb shades at most windows | 159,000 yen | Instead, or in addition to curtains, we added these shades. We had some special discount making these cheaper, but added electric motors to all. |
| Add automatic cleaning functionality to the bathtub | 130,000 yen | We give our baby a bath everyday, so this will save about 5 minutes of work each day. |
| EcoCute water heater upgrade to high-power, 460 liter model | 90,000 yen | Our bathroom is on the second floor, so we wanted the high power model to ensure good water pressure. |
| Sink with motion sensor tap in the second toilet (first floor) | 73,800 yen | |
| Washing machine facet upgrade, to include hot water | 19,200 yen | The default one only has cold water and we might get a washing machine that will need both. |
Walls, floors, and windows - 859,900 yen
Walls, floors, and windows are mainly part of the base price (as they are what makes a house a house), but of course we added some extra options.
Having grown up in a brick house, I am used to be able to make a hole anywhere in the wall to attach something. However the wooden frames only allow this at every 45 cm (where they have the pillars). If one wants to attach something midway (e.g. TV on the wall, furniture, toilet paper holder), Ichijo needs to include an additional panel behind the wallpaper. This costs extra and also reduces the insulation slightly (an issue with outer walls), so we had to consider it where to add it. Same goes for the ceiling (e.g. for lighting rails or curtains).
| Item | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Rustic hard maple flooring on the second floor | 307,500 yen | We wanted real wood flooring at least in the living room, so got this from Asahi WoodTec |
| Additional window sashes | 225,600 yen | We added a lot of windows to make the living room bright |
| Stronger walls and ceiling | 127,100 yen | So that we can attach stuff anywhere on them. Also made the bottom of the balcony strong for hanging my bike from there. |
| Magnetic wall in the kitchen | 86,000 yen | Added a magnetic board from Mira Tap to the wall in the kitchen, so that we can attach hooks and shelves easily |
| Extra wallpaper | 83,700 yen | For the most part we were happy with the default wallpapers, but added some accent colors here and there, and changed them to water repellent ones in the bathrooms. |
| Different flooring per floor | 30,000 yen | We left the first floor with the basic flooring, so got charged this extra for having different flooring per floor. |
Smart home - 661,080 yen
I shared the details of this in an earlier post, so I’ll just list out the options here that are not included in other categories (e.g. air conditioners are smart, but they are already in the equipment upgrade section).
| Item | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Smart switches | 340,780 yen | Panasonic Advanced Series |
| Ichijo’s Cloud HEMS system | 150,000 yen | This includes the smart breaker box, and adapters for the floor heating and EcuCute water heater. |
| Two outside security cameras | 95,600 yen | |
| Intercom upgrade | 28,000 yen | To show the camera’s feed when motion is detected, and to connect to the internet. |
| Connecting the entrance door to the intercom | 21,000 yen | And via the intercom to the internet. |
| Earth wire to the non-smart switches | 18,000 yen | There are 3 non-smart switches, and I asked to bring an Earth wire to them in case we want to make them smart in the future. |
| HEMS adapter for the air circulation system | 7,700 yen | Connect the ロスガード９０うるケア to HEMS |
Things we didn’t ask for - 597,300 yen
There were some things that we had to pay for due to our land or the shape of the house.
| Item | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Stronger foundation | 298,400 yen | ベタ基礎, one level higher than the basic foundation. This came from the result of our land survey that we could only do after buying the land. |
| Dropped ceiling | 130,000 yen | The ceiling had to be lowered by 20 cm in the kitchen (to cover the pipe from the range hood) and in the kids room (to cover the pipes leaving the bathroom) |
| Weird shaped roof | 79,000 yen | To maximize the size of the solar panel we made the angle of the roof custom, which cost extra. |
| Sliding door for the entrance | 38,100 yen | The shape of our house requires a sliding entrance door, so had to upgrade the normal one. |
| Strengthen the load-bearing walls | 27,000 yen | Some walls on the first floor had to be made stronger to hold up the second floor. This would be more if we had the living room on the first floor. |
| Snow stoppers on the roof | 24,800 yen | On the small roof that doesn’t have solar (as the solar includes these by default). |
Lights and electrical stuff - 467,832 yen
We had to get LED lights for one of the subsidies, and we also changed quite a few lights because we didn’t like the design of the default ones. Also we wanted to have more flexibility in the future, so chose replaceable lights, and used rails in the kitchen and dining room.
| Item | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Lights | 219,032 yen | Some from Ichijo’s LED package, some from the makers’ catalogue. |
| Additional electrical work | 165,400 yen | I guess we did too much customization, so they have to work more than what’s included in the base price. |
| Upgrade ethernet to CAT6A (from CAT5e) | 53,400 yen | It’s expensive to upgrade later, so I wanted the best they could do. |
| One additional ethernet port | 30,000 yen | Not sure where, since we added them in all rooms, but some might have been part of the base price. |
One thing not mentioned here are the smart switches, as I counted them already at the smart home section.
Storage and laundry poles - 413,700 yen
Most storage is included in the base price (closets in the rooms, at the genkan, around the bathroom sink, etc.), but storage is never enough.
| Item | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Attic storage / loft | 262,500 yen | The overall floor-space of the house is limited to 80% of the land size, but rooms with height up to 140 cm don’t count, so we could add a 9 m2 storage room in the attic. |
| Under-floor storage, 5 box | 103,000 yen | This slides back and forth, increasing the capacity 5-fold compared to a regular storage. It opens from the hallway on the first floor. |
| Cloth dryer hangers and wires | 48,200 yen | Hanger in the bathroom and balcony, wire in the living room and main bedroom. |
Solar panel and battery - 1,310,300 yen
This includes a 4.9 kW solar panel and a 7.04 kW battery. The solar panel depends on the size of the roof, and we got the biggest possible for our house. The battery was either this, or double size for an additional 700,000 yen (but the subsidies would have covered 500,000 yen of that), but we decided to stay with the single size.
Summary
All in all, I feel that Ichijo’s default options are pretty generous, and the things we added will increase our wellbeing while living in this house.