"Ryan Ginstrom" <ginstrom@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bld3r2$au9el$1@ID-101276.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Well, the final word on the loan came through yesterday, so I guess it's
> official. We now own a house in Japan.
>
> We had been thinking of a few options on how to buy a house. We thought
> about buying a really cheap place with cash, or getting permanent
residence
> for me. In the end, we had my wife apply for the loan. To prepare, I've
been
> paying her a "salary" out of my income for a few years.
>
> Interestingly, I am the joint guarantor on the loan, and have half the
house
> in my name. It seems like you just need the Japanese citizenship/perm
> residence to get things rolling, after that they don't care who the hell
> pays for it.
>
> Right now interest is dirt cheap -- our rate is 1.975%. It's variable
> though -- we decided against fixed because a fixed 10-year interest rate
was
> higher than the variable rate has been in years.
>
> The house itself is pretty cool. It's on a kind of slope, with the ocean
> below. It's on 140-odd tsubo of land, and the house takes up a fair part
of
> it. View of the ocean is 180 degrees, and it's really very pretty. I've
> already got the spot for my hammock picked out.
>

Congratulations Ryan!

Welcome to thirty years of "a reason to work" apart from securing funds in
order to buy brown water.

We were fortunate with our loans in that my business was able to take out a
20% of the total cost loan, the substantive loan that was a joint affair.
(I'm still only on the 3-year spouse visa, and "sumo jnr." wasn't even a
glint in the milkman's eye at that time.)

We both signed the loan documents (if I remember correctly there were about
36 name-stamp marks required - each - including even the spine of the
folder) and had the money in the bank about a month before my wife quit her
nursing job.  We made no secret of her plans to leave - but neither of the
banks seemed particularly bothered about how that might affect our financial
situation.

Of course, being an uptight Brit, both the mortgage rate and the entire
property cost was very cheap compared to something similar in semi-rural
Worcestershire or Warwickshire.


-- 
jonathan
--
"Never give a mortgage to ducks"