Home network setup for our new house

We just built our house in Tokyo and in a recent post I wrote about how we got internet. In this post I will share how I set up the network within the house.

Internet for our new house

We just built our house in Tokyo. In this post I will cover how we got internet.

Home inspection and why we decided to skip it for our home

Building a home is often the biggest purchase of one’s life. But most people are not experts in home construction, so to avoid being cheated by the builder, some people hire a 3rd party company to inspect the house to ensure no corners were cut during the construction.

Delay in the mortgage for our house

We bought land in Tokyo last year and just finished building our house. We are financing both the land and the house with a mortgage, and just run into some delays with the mortgage. This won’t affect much, but it makes the interest on the bridge loan about 50,000 yen higher, and makes the mortgage of the house start later.

Receiving the keys to our new house

Last week our house was finished, and we had the official handover (家の引き渡し) yesterday.

When to register the new address when moving into our new house

We are building our house in Tokyo, and as the construction is coming to an end, we had to decide when to update our address at the city hall.

Home insurance in Japan

We are building our house in Tokyo, and as the construction is coming to an end, we looked into home insurance.

Timing of the payments for the house, and the bridge loan (つなぎ融資)

We are currently building our home in Tokyo with Ichijo. I wrote about the cost of our house before, and in this post I will cover the payment schedule, and how the bridge loan (つなぎ融資) comes into the picture.

Real estate acquisition tax in Japan (不動産取得税)

We bought a land in Tokyo in May last year and are currently building a house. A few weeks ago (about 1 year 3 months since buying the land) I received a letter from the Tokyo tax office titled 不動産取得税の申告, Real estate acquisition tax return. But I’m already paying property tax (固定資産税) to my local city every year, so what’s this then?

Getting a new address for our home

We are building our house in Tokyo. Previously there was an old house on this land with a garden. That house was taken down and the land got split into two (very common in Tokyo). Somehow the other land got to keep the original address, which meant we had to get a new one.

Caring for the land: from buying it until the construction starts

We are currently building our home in Tokyo. I wrote about our process and the costs associated with buying the land and the process of designing our house, and in this post I’ll describe how we cared for the land from the time we bought it to the time construction started.

Garden structure (carport, bicycle shelter) rules in Tokyo

We are building a house in Tokyo. The house design is finalized, and the constructions is ongoing, so we are finalizing the garden design. One common thing to put into the garden is some sort of roof over either a car or bicycles, often referred to as カーポート(carport) and サイクルポート (cycleport). We just learned that there are rules about these.

Designing our house

We recently wrapped up the design of our house. I will share how it went in this post.

Ichijo friend referral

Ichijo, as most major house makers, offer a friend referral system.

Why we chose to own our home instead of renting

Back in January 2023 I wrote a post on the renting vs buying decision in Tokyo concluding that the two options have comparable financial outcomes (assuming the renter invests the additional money into a diversified portfolio). Yet we decided to build our house. In this post I’ll share the reasons that contributed to this decision.

The cost of our Ichijo house

We 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.

Ichijo's smart home options

We are building a house in Tokyo with Ichijo 一条工務店. In previous apartments I always had a limited smart home setup, so now that we got to design the whole house, I wanted to consider every available options and add them if they make sense. I’ll review what we ended up adding to our design in this post.

Buying a land in Tokyo

About a year ago we bought a plot of land in western Tokyo in Musashino city (see this post about why we chose this place). In this post I’ll share the process of finding and buying the land, and the associated costs.

Custom kitchen with Ichijo

We are building a house in Tokyo with Ichijo 一条工務店. They are known to provide outstanding cost-performance (especially in insulation), but a lack of customization options. One place where this caused us extra work was the kitchen, and I’ll share our journey in this post.

Odelic Connected Lighting

We are building a house, and I recently looked into smart lighting and light switches concluding that the best option for us was likely Panasonic’s Advance Series Link Plus, which later I did a deep-dive on. Then I took a look at Koizumi’s TRee system, and now to finish up my investigation into Japanese smart lighting systems, I will share what I learned about Odelic’s Connected Lighting.

TRee: Koizumi's smart light system

We are building a house, and I recently looked into smart lighting and light switches concluding that the best option for us was likely Panasonic’s Advance Series Link Plus, which later I did a deep-dive on. Then we started looking at the actual lights to see what fits with our design, and found Panasonic’s offerings underwhelming. This made us look at other manufacturers, namely Koizumi and Odelic. They both have smart lights, so I will share what I learned about each, started with Koizumi.

Testing the Panasonic Advance Series Link Plus smart light switches

We are building a house, and I recently looked into smart lighting and light switches concluding that the best option for us is likely Panasonic’s Advance Series Link Plus switches (アドバンスシリーズ リンクプラス). I got my hands on two of the switches and in this post I’ll share what I learned from testing them out.

Smart lighting options in Japan

We are in the process of building our house, and I want to use this opportunity to add some smart home solutions. Right now my focus is on ensuring that the things that come with the house are capable of “being smart” (controlled with automation). Big part of this is lighting, and in this post I’ll review what I learned about smart lighting options available in Japan.

What to check before buying a land in Tokyo

We are currently at the final steps of buying a land in Tokyo, so in this post I’ll share the information we checked when considering a given land. In an earlier post I looked at comparing the data on cities of Tokyo, which gives a good high level view, while this post will look at data-sources that are useful when looking at a specific land.

Comparing cities to live in: Musashino vs Mitaka vs Koganei

We decided to build our own house in Tokyo. We narrowed down our area to the following stations on the Chuo line: Mitaka (Mitaka City), Musashi-sakai (Musashino City), Musashi-Koganei (Koganei City). We also considered Kichijoji, but it was way out of budget (also it gets very crowded on weekends), and Higashi-Koganei (the station between Musashi-sakai and Musashi-Koganei), but currently it lacks the shops and amenities that we got used to. It is being actively developed, so it might get there in the next 5-10 years, but it’s also between two pretty well developed stations, so chain stores might pass on opening their stores there (e.g. both neighboring stations have Ito-Yokado shopping malls, making it unlikely that there would be one in Higashi-Koganei in the future).

Choosing where to live is one of the truly life-altering decisions, especially for our children (as it affects which school they go to, their friends and also influences their career). While big part of this can’t be foreseen, I decided to take a look at the data available to compare these cities. I believe the same data is published for most cities in Japan, so even if you are looking at other places, this post might be able to help you make your own comparison.

Thoughts on the future of the real estate market of Tokyo

This is a continuation of my previous post on buying vs renting in Tokyo

The future resale price of a property depends on demand: are there going to be people willing and able to purchase it? Let’s look into the forecasts affecting this. I will try my best to use official (government) statistics and forecasts, even if these are a few years outdated.

Thoughts on renting vs buying in Tokyo

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about buying either a house or an apartment (mansion), or whether renting makes more sense for now. The primary aim of this post is to collect my thoughts, and record the decision so that I can revisit it in the future. It might also help others considering the same question, but that’s not the main intention (e.g. I will focus exclusively on my use-case and not cover other locations or sizes).