Sunday, July 09, 2006
housing in Tokyo
My wife and i took a look at a reasonably priced older home in Suginami ku a few months back. I say reasonably priced but it depends what you compare it to and what you plan to do with the property. The house had lots of restrictions because of the zoning laws. The law says that you have to have a 4 meter wide road as access to the property in order to tear down the house and build a new one. This house can only be accessed by a small alley way about 2 feet wide. How can that be?
People built the house then others came along and boxed it in. They are thousands of these properties around Tokyo.
Usually people do tear down houses like the one we found that is 30 years old because of the constant threat of earthquakes. We would also have had to pay cash for the property because it is worthless to the banks because if they foreclosed they wouldnt be able to scrap and build and jack up the price for an ugly prefab.
So what is the property good for? as far as Tokyo is concerned nothing. I could think of several ways to make this property attractive. One loophole is that the buyer can reinforce the existing house and/or "remodel" . What do they mean by remodel? Basically anything until they come while your doing it and say you cant do that. You can even build a house on stilts over the existing house. You just have to keep a certain percentage of the frame and foundation. What percentage? i dont know.
Anyway my point is there are probably thousands of these properties in and around Tokyo. It would be nice if the government would be proactive in the city planning department to see that these properties are used instead of people sprawling into the countryside.
does anyone have any info on this topic?
People built the house then others came along and boxed it in. They are thousands of these properties around Tokyo.
Usually people do tear down houses like the one we found that is 30 years old because of the constant threat of earthquakes. We would also have had to pay cash for the property because it is worthless to the banks because if they foreclosed they wouldnt be able to scrap and build and jack up the price for an ugly prefab.
So what is the property good for? as far as Tokyo is concerned nothing. I could think of several ways to make this property attractive. One loophole is that the buyer can reinforce the existing house and/or "remodel" . What do they mean by remodel? Basically anything until they come while your doing it and say you cant do that. You can even build a house on stilts over the existing house. You just have to keep a certain percentage of the frame and foundation. What percentage? i dont know.
Anyway my point is there are probably thousands of these properties in and around Tokyo. It would be nice if the government would be proactive in the city planning department to see that these properties are used instead of people sprawling into the countryside.
does anyone have any info on this topic?
hd 5:14 PM