House hunting…
Well it seems we are going to start house hunting sooner rather than later.
Up until now no firm decision had been made for 2 reasons- 1. We didn`t have quite enough saved up for a down payment and 2. We were not 100% sure we would still be in Japan in 5-10 years time. Shun had I did a lot of talking a couple weeks back about his career, what he wanted to do, whether he wanted to stay in Japan or think about going to Australia and also about what I wanted which was a place of our own. Either in Japan or Australia. When I married Shun I already knew that there was a 95% chance we would be in Japan forever and I was okay with this. I have good friends here, a nice life and I like my life here most of the time. I am far away from my family and this is hard but I can visit and they can also visit us here.
We have decided that living here is probably better for us financially if I don`t want to return to full-time work while Noah, or our next child, is young. I can do part-time work and earn decent money. Shun would also be unable to get work in his desired field in Australia with his current English language skills.
As for the down payment- we had about 1-2% saved but recently found out there is a chunk of money in Shun`s name for when he decided to buy property (him and his brother, and his three cousins all had these “trust funds” i guess you could call them which were set up by Shun`s grandma when they were born or very young) and we now have 5-10% of the down payment saved (it depends on the price of the house we decide on and the loan) and while we are in no hurry to find a place we have decided to start doing some research and looking around.
This Saturday we are going to look at some model homes in this area. We have also spoken with Shun`s parents and they really want us to live closer to them (at the moment it is only about 12km but it is a 30 min or more drive), like within a bike ride distance and I am happy with this. I have always maintained with Shun that living close to his parents would not be a problem for me. But that living with them or next door might be. I would be happy to be close though. They see Noah currently about once a fortnight but I would be happy if it was more often than this especially since Noah is so far from his other grandparents. So this weekend we are looking at some model houses in Funabashi but my MIL plans to keep any info she gets about property in Moto Yawata or Ichikawa and give us when she sees us next time (things show up in letterboxes, newspapers etc).
We are not 100% set on a new house although I think it would be my choice since houses here only have a 25 year shelf life anyway ( I read that somewhere? Shun`s parents house was built before he was born so it is at least 30 years old though and is still standing although there has been recent talk of reforms now that it is just Shun`s parents that live there so I am not sure if this figure means that after that time you are just paying for the land and not the house)
We have got some other wants and of course the list just keeps growing although until we start looking around some more none of these are definites.
We would prefer to be on the JR sobu line within a 30 minute walk of one of the stations between Ichikawa-Tsudanuma. We are looking for 38 tsubo or more (I think 1 tsubo is about 3m2? Sounds tiny right? But yeah, that is the norm in this area or even a bit bigger than the norm for a new place. My PILs land though is 79 Tsubo) of land, there must be a small garden or enough space outside for kids to play, within a 15 minute walk to the local elementary school (This is Shun`s requirement- he lived a 1 minute walk from his elementary school and his brother, father and grandfather went to the same one), the house needs to be 100m2 or bigger (4LDK or more) (This is my requirement) and there must be room for one car at least. Pretty loose guidelines at the moment- we have a maximum price in mind too although will have to wait and see what sort of loan we would be eligible from the bank.
Again, like I said, we are in no hurry (although paying rent each month is looking less and less appealing especially when our mortgage would be the same or less a month than what we pay in rent. The timeline is to have bought and be living in a place within 2 years and I doubt anything of interest will happen until I get back from Australia in January but for now we are having fun looking online and around and crunching some numbers.
So any advice?
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