Would you buy a 50-year old house?

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gonbechan
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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by gonbechan »

Some municipalities have subsidies for septic tank and/or sewer hookup, so be sure to check with your local government.

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Tora wrote:
Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:25 pm
The fact that I cranked up the rock a made a point of cursing extra loud every time I made a mistake might have discouraged them as well :whistle:
"Jesus built my hotrod" is always a good one for that :lol:

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by farmingnoob »

Yesterday I went for a drive and checked out both properties I mentioned here. The first is a 50-year old post-war style house that has been renovated. The second is 65-years old in traditional Japanese style and has not been renovated (great DIY chance).

They both look pretty good to me as the properties have been cleaned up, there are few neighbors, and of course, really cheap. But I think the biggest problem is that the "streets" are just wide enough for a compact car to pass through. This is definitely kei truck country. I doubt I could convince my wife to go along with this.

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Do you reckon the narrow roads would be a total deal breaker ? Mrs Nouka is also extremely reluctant to ride in our kei truck unless we are doing something specifically connected with farming or logging.

Is there a high bank on either side of the road preventing a wider car from going down them ?

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by farmingnoob »

The road is roughly 2m wide. Basically on one side is a drop into a rice field and on the other side is the property which steeply slopes up. A lot of construction could make a nice driveway but my goal is to save money :lol:

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by Zasso Nouka »

And no one wants to end up with the car accidentally in the rice field :lol:

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by donguri »

We bought a country house two years ago that is 90 years old. We did a fair amount of renovations, but most of those were for the restaurant/bar that we opened on the first floor. The lifelines were pretty much all functional and the price was extremely cheap. It just depends on what type of home/lifestyle you're comfortable with and what you plan to do with the property in the future.

As for running city water into a place-it's usually calculated by how many meters and it is expensive. I've used well water and a septic system in another location and had no problems. I actually quite liked the well water.

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by starting_the_dream »

gonbechan wrote:
Thu Jul 18, 2019 10:42 pm
Some municipalities have subsidies for septic tank and/or sewer hookup, so be sure to check with your local government.
Our septic system is actually owned by the city and we 'rent' it from them. They paid to put it in and someone checks it every 3 to 4 months. They even pumped it out last year. Check with city hall, they might have a similar program.

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by edmundedgar »

Our house is getting on for 60 years old - clearly the earthquake engineering isn't going to be as good as something modern, and the house has some (awesome) features like a huge stone wall that you wouldn't be allowed to build nowadays. I console myself that it doesn't seem to have taken any damage on 3/11, whereas a lot of places close to us (Mashiko, Tochigi-ken) did, and aside from the 3/11 monster there's not that much seismic activity around us for Japan, so it's unlikely to see another earthquake that big in my lifetime.

Also my general unscientific impression is that post-war houses tend to be quite poor quality, and pre-war stuff seems to be more sturdy. Our place is very solidly built, but it seems like the woman who built it spent a lot on it - she was a very successful potter, pottery is kind of like music where a few popular people make all the money and loads of people just scrape by. Generally I suspect older is better.

We had running water (although the last occupants seem to have turned it off and used the well to save money) and gigabit fibre, but the toilet was just a hole in the ground. We got a septic tank put in which we paid for upfront but will be covered by the town subsidy, although there's also an annual service charge that we'll have to cover. Then we had to fix the roof and repair bits of wood that were rotten, and redo the electrics. That much would have made it basically livable but cold, but we also ripped out the windows and most of the interior and added extra walls (see the insulation thread).
Last edited by edmundedgar on Sun Feb 09, 2020 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Would you buy a 50-year old house?

Post by edmundedgar »

farmingnoob wrote:
Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:18 am
But I think the biggest problem is that the "streets" are just wide enough for a compact car to pass through. This is definitely kei truck country. I doubt I could convince my wife to go along with this.
Bear in mind that as well as potentially being a PITA for you, that'll impact renovation costs for anything you have to do on the place. We have a (very short, maybe 10 meters) slope leading into our place, and when we got a quote for knocking it down and starting again, they told us that compared to a bit of land with better access it would cost maybe an extra million yen because they couldn't get heavy equipment up there, so they'd have to carry stuff and use smaller machines. Ultimately when we cleared out the undergrowth it turned out we could get middling-sized trucks up there fine, but if there was a longer distance I think all kinds of things would cost you quite a bit extra.

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