Recently around my neighborhood there has been a fresh real estate agent walking around trying to scout new customers. From morning till night, Mondays to Sundays, he is around trying to sell two units I am yet to actually take a look at.
A couple weeks ago after getting off from work and just stepping out of my vehicle, he approached me:
“Please help me!”
In a desperate and emotional voice.
“If I don’t bring back some leads to my office I may lose my job.”
I understand the plight of a salesman, especially in Japan where most potential customers won’t hesitate to ignore you.Luckily I was in a good mood and being a salesman myself, I wanted to see what this dude was up to in terms of what could he actually do for me:
“Well I’m not looking for a new place, I hate loans. I’m looking for old houses that I can buy cheap, fix up an rent out. If your company can show me such places I’d take a trip to the office.”
“Yes I can do that, my car is 3 minutes away.”
So he escorts me to his smelly car and asks me a few questions before calling the office and asking them to prepare some documents.
“Ah yes, I don’t feel so worthless anymore, maybe I can be useful.” He said as he drove me to his office.
Now, you tell me, is this any way for a sales man to talk? Nope, in my opinion a salesman needs to have confidence in himself, the last thing a salesman wants to come off as is having a low self-esteem. This guy reeked of failure.
As we entered his fancy office that has branches in major cities in Japan, it was obvious to me that I wouldn’t be getting any deals here. But I still wanted to see what his company could show me about the housing market in the area. They brought a couple files out with houses that ranged from 6-12 million yen (50k-100k USD). As I sipped the green tea they offered and looked keenly at the old houses 🏠 on sale in town I thought to myself: ( If these guys are showing me houses at these prices, I wonder what the real value is?).
So I left the office with a file full of houses for sale and a giant eco bag with the company logo on it LOL. So I guess my wife will be a walking advertisement for this company. On a serious note though, this company seems to be buying upland and building houses in very tight spaces.
Yesterday while I was killing some time walking, I took a look at one of their latest developments. They were building 6 homes on a very small piece of land. Not only that, step out of these houses and you are literally walking into the street. I went up close to one of these homes and knocked on the "wall", it has so hollow, made of some kinda of plastic wood. No doubt it would do well in a mag 7 earthquake but I can't help but think of the low cost material the company used in order to maximize profits. After all, they managed to cramp so many units into a tiny space.
I would love to own a home now, but I cannot imagine living in a place like this with no yard, nowhere to plant a few trees. And this seems to be the trend with new developments here. I would not feel safe living here either as some drunk driver could just swerve and hit right into your plastic Lego house house. But I guess this is what affordability looks like in Japan.