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For the past 3 weeks or so I have been hunting for a new apartment. Reasons: My laboratory is moving to Hongo (central Tokyo) next year, and my contract is finishing this October. Since I have to pay a fee to renew my contract, and also I have just finished my Master Thesis (all about it in another post) - which gives me a lull in my academic activities - the timing was propitious for apartment hunting.

Marilia was also thinking to move, because her current dorm has some problems - the common kitchen and shower room are often very dirty, and her room is tiny. So we decided to try and share an apartment.

Japan, specially Tokyo, is known for its ludicrous real-state prices. So finding an apartment which is cheap, good and well localized may be a difficult task. Of course, like with everything in japan, there is a lot of urban legends regarding apartment hunting and some out-of-date information. Here is our personal experience for this time out:

0- Setting up goals:

Marilia studies in Hachiouji, and I currently study in Kashiwa, and starting next year will study in Hongo. So, first of all, we had to pick a place that is not too far away from either of our schools. That takes Saitama and Eastern Tokyo (kita senju, chiba) out of the equation. The best lines for her are Chuo-line and Keio-line, so we tried to find stations that were close to these lines.

Regarding price, we decided a price range for rent that was about our current rents added together as the topmost rent we would pay. We also set a limit for the “initial money” - In japan you have to pay deposit (usually 1-2 rents), a fee to the landlord (1-2 rents), and an extra fee to the real-state agent (1-2 rents) in addition to the initial rent when you move into an apartment. This can sometimes be bargained, and varies with apartment, so we set up the max total price we would pay, based on our current savings.

We also defined a small set of “requirements” for our apartment - for example, Marilia wanted an apartment on 2o floor or above, because of safety concerns. We also wanted an apartment with two separate rooms, and a minimum area of 40m2. There were a few more requirements, but those were kind of flexible, like the number of tatami and flooring rooms, etc.

We decided all that when we first thought about moving, in early august. Then we set up to search for apartments.

1- Pre-search preparations

After we kind of decided what kind of apartments we wanted, we starting looking on the Real Estate Agent companies webpages for apartments that fit our requirements. We actually found quite a few of them, specially in the Kichijyoji/tsutsujigaoka areas, which cheered us up. Things were looking good. We made a selection of the best apartments, printed them out, and prepared
to go to the real estate agents in the webpage to ask for more info.

2- Going for the REA - part 1

Since Marilia had her Asia trip, I did the first round of REA visiting by myself.　I visited Mansion Apartment Plaza in ogikubo, and “roommate” in kichijyoji on a saturday. First, the good news: REA nowadays are much more gaijin friendly. There are many stories about shops that have a separate list of apartments that can be rented to gaijins, and sometimes of a gaijin trying many apartments just to hear a “gaijin wa dame” (no foreigners allowed) from the agent, but this seem a trend that is dying out. Of course, I had a few apartments denied due to my gaijinness, and I had an easier time about it, for speaking japanese and being the student of a prestigious university, but all the REA I visited tried pretty hard to convince proprietors who didn’t want gaijins that it was an old concept, and often succeeded.

Now the bad news - searching for apartments in the web is all but worthless. The information is outdated - often the apartment would be occupied already, yet the companies did not take the information off the web - or just plain wrong - one apartment was listed as having a western style toilet, when it had a japanese-style one, and another apartment was much more expensive than the information on the webpage. One of the clerks I talked to even admitted that the information on the net was just to “call customers for the shop”. So, searching for apartments on the web is only useful for giving you a vague idea of the market.

Anyway, the first REA, MA Plaza ogikubo, only netted us one apartment. I took two samples from our internet search to the guy. He promptly discarded one, saying that it was already occupied, and then he proceeded to talk to me about the second. He was quite nice, but he droned on and on about how the second one was nice, and how I should move to it, and discuss prices and policies, and lots of stuff, without actually giving me any good info. He gave me a few pictures of the apartment, and promised me that the following day we would go there, but all in all I spent a few hours there for no good result.

Roommate, in Kichijyoji, was quite different. I arrived there at 6 in saturday (the shop closes at 7), and the clerk was nice enough. He looked at the samples I brought him, noted down my preferences, and told that it was kinda late to start looking for an apartment, and suggested that he did some searching for himself at night, and that I came again the next morning, when he would show me the apartments he found in his REA.

The next day, I went at 10 to MA Plaza, but the guy again started to drone about how good the apartment was, and only took me to actually see the apartment at 12. He was all the time asking me when I would sign the contract with him, even before I set foot in the apartment. Very annoying. Also, he would not look for other apartments to show me. The apartment was okay enough, but I wanted to see other options.

At 2 I went to Roommate, and it was a completely different story. Mr. Furumura, the clerk, was waiting for me with 10 different apartmets. He would show me where each of those was in the map, and we cut the list down to 6 apartments, in two different stations. He told me that we only had time to see 3 apartments that day, so we went to the 3 in Musashigaya. Since that station is quite far from tokyo, the apartments were very good for the prices.

The big problem, in both cases, was: we were in mid-august, and I only wanted to move in october. In both real estate agents they told me that I was searching too early, that they could not hold an apartment for moving in october in august :-/ So, in the end, I did not pick any apartment, and decided to wait two weeks - until september - before searching again. That would allow me to search together with Marilia as well.

3- Getting Lucky

Sometimes, all the search won’t help. While we were waiting for the two weeks to pass, a friend of ours said that he and his wife were moving out of japan on the mailing list, and that he was looking for someone to stay in the apartment in his place. Me and Marilia asked him to see the apartment saturday night. Also, since it was a nice apartment in Komagome, we added Komagome to our list of “places to look”.

4- Visiting REA - part 2

Two weeks later, after Marilia was back from Asia, we decided to go apartment hunting again. Like before, we did a brief search on the internet before going to the real estate agents, specially because now we would be searching in the komagome area as well.

However, actually looking for apartments in kagome disappointed us a little. The REA was in ikebukuro, and it was the crappiest we had been to - the clerk asked us to fill a requirement form that was TOO detailed - including things like “how big do you want the closets?”, “Where should be the plug for the washing machine”, and such minutia we didn’t REALLY care about. Then, after asking all that, he just dumped a big list of apartments in the general region we were looking for, and we had to look for ourselves. Meh.

Saturday, we decided to go looking in kichijyoji again, and at night check out the Komagome apartment from the mailing list. We went back to HomeMate, and mr. Furumura showed us a few more apartments in the inokashira line area. Those were rather nice, close to the station, but he couldn’t show us all that he had, because the proprietor for some of the apartments are away. When we finished, it was still 4 in the afternoon, so we decided to head to MiniMini in kichijyoji, to check a few more apartments before going to komagome.

Another apartment hunting myth: It is said that all the fudoyasans around the same station have mostly the same apartments, but that definately was not true. When we got to minimini (where we were very well treated, by the way), the clerks quickly showed us 4 apartments in an area that RoomMate told us all were sold - and they were very nice apartments as well! They took us to check out the two best apartments among those they showed us, and we were really impressed. The apartments were large, not very expensive, and in an area with good access to both Marilia’s and mine schools.

We were almost deciding on one of the Mini Mini apartments, but we thought that we should at least look Fausto’s Komagome apartment that night first. That was a wise decision - The apartment was great! It was just as big as the Mini Mini’s apartment, cheaper, and closer to the center of Tokyo. It was farther from Marilia’s school, but she was okay with that, because our
total spending with transport to school would be less than if we lived at a compromise location (also she will be paying
a smaller share of the rent because of that ;-)). Also, since he was only moving out in the end of september, we wouldn’t
have to worry about someone else taking the apartment in the meanwhile. Win!

5- The aftermatch

Having decided on an apartment, the following day we had to call all the other Real Estate Agencies to tell them that we had decided. Actually, I forgot to do that, and all of them called me in turn, asking me when I would visit them again. The most interesting one was Mini Mini - when I told them I had found an apartment better than theirs, their representative offered me a cut of almost 30% on the key money! When just last night he said he really couldn’t make it lower.

Fact: Do try to drive a hard bargain to lower the Key Money/Deposit costs before deciding on a place.

—–

Well, that is about it, I hope it was useful for other apartment hunters in Tokyo. So, summing up the hints:
1- Information on the net is not accurate at all
2- If you speak japanese, and are a student, “gaijin ha dame” isn’t usually a problem
3- Mini mini is a very nice Real Estate Agent
4- Different agents in the same area have different offers
5- Do try to bargain with them!
6- Start looking for an apartment the month before moving, and not before that.
7- Inokashira-line has nice apartments, and is not THAT much out of the way.

Here is a little map with the apartments we looked into - to give you a better idea of what we did.

View Larger Map

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.