In Utah County the cheapest “House” for sale is 600 square feet, 2 bed, 1 bath, at $300k.

So at current interest rate it would be $1,800 a month mortgage(assuming you put the 60k down payment! A decent amount more if you do 3% down.)

The cheapest condo/town in utah valley is 205k, 1,100 square feet, on a 400 square foot lot. But due to a $500 HOA fee the monthly cost is still 1,700 a month (assuming 20% down).

With 3.5% down they’d both be closer to 2.1k +PIMI.

So yeah, how is where you live doing?

  • tiredofsametab@kbin.run
    9·
    4 months ago

    This is for an area of western, suburban Tokyo. Edit: most are going to be around 1.25+ hours into Shinjuku involving transfers and up to a 20 minute walk to the nearest station.

    In USD terms, around $76,000. 52.x square meters 3 rooms, bath, dining+kitchen (so one room is presumably getting used as the living room). Another few hundred a year in maintenance/condo fees. But it’s in a building from 1976 which is before the latest major earthquake law revision and I would absolutely not live there (property can appreciate in Japan, but houses are not seen as investments and lose value really quickly).

    Poking around, there are freestanding houses as well in that range, but they cannot be rebuilt so you’re stuck with the existing structure (I don’t know to what degree one could legally “Ship of Theseus” the thing; interior renovation is fine). This is mostly due to a change in law requiring at least a 4-meter-wide (IIRC) road connecting to the property (and mostly for emergency services access). You can buy these on the cheap but it’s because they’re not a long-term solution and you’ll be stuck holding the bag on worthless land to all except maybe a neighbor who might want to buy it (but if it’s for sale now, they don’t).

    There are actually a surprising number of buildings after 1981 (latest major earthquake law revision, basically required for mortgage + insurance), but a lot of them are in areas with heavy restrictions (landscape laws, height laws, aviation laws (I have no idea what that one means; maybe it’s in a flight path (noisy) or has some additional height/light restrictions?)), etc.

    The search site I used doesn’t have any good way of searching for used homes without restrictions built after 1981 for comparison and I got tired of clicking.

    Prices jump a lot within a 20-minute walk of the closest station; most people don’t want to live further.