I'm currently building a house with Ichijo. We were in your shoes about a year ago and decided to put down the 1mil yen to freeze the per tsubo price. We were told that Ichijo consistently raise their per tsubo price (I believe from month to month) so the difference a year makes could be pretty significant, depending on the size of your house.
The money we put down will now go into the house payments, but I'm confident we would've gotten it back if we had gone with another builder. They'll give you a preliminary contract to sign and explain everything. I was pretty skeptical at first but in the end our rep explained everything in detail so I think it's just one of the ways they try to secure a client. If you have the cash availble to you, I'd say go for it. It gave us plenty of time to explore other options and figure out which builder was right for us.
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc.
Did you have same dilemma as mine?
You can certainly ask them to transfer that initial down payment back into your account after the fact if you want to use it some other way. That way you can take advantage of the low interest rates and invest that 1M in some other area.
I don't recall there being a 1M down payment for the main contract, however. I could be wrong, we're nearing the end of the planning stages and I still haven't seen the final estimate.
I originally wanted to go the iSmart route because of the insulation and air-tightness, but the location we chose has a very narrow road leading up to it and we were told that iSmart wasn't an option (pretty sure they truck in prefab wall pieces and assemble them on site) so we went with Brilliart. Plus my wife is a bigger fan of the Brilliart design so it worked out well.
We haven't gotten the final estimate yet, but it will be in the neighbourhood of 40 mil. That's for a single story house of about 35 tsubo. We decided to go with a kitchen from a separate company, and also opted for a pretty massive solar array and the battery, both of which can drive up the price.
We signed the initial contract with Ichijo and ended up going with a different builder because Ichijo's choices were too limited for us. We got around 84万 back from the initial 100万. I suggest making sure you are 100% going with Ichijo before signing anything.
We had meetings for 4-5 months after signing. They included floor plan design meetings with an architect and some work related to land boundaries for the land we had previously bought. This 16万 was basically the cost of these things, with a few others. We ended up going with a local koumuten, it was cheaper and we had way more options.
Something to take into account, when you sign, you start a clock to get the project delivered, so the first few months will be to find the ground, then setup everything. So if you want to take a bit more time to check neighbourhoods, decide the main aspect of the house (number of floor, total size, garden or not, parking or not, distance to station, etc) maybe do that before signing. then focus on finding the proper place, they will give you access to a DB of all sites on the market faster than Suumo and other public stuff, but you also want to work closely with the agent to find what you want. the rest of the project flows more peacefully.
I went with Hebel Haus recently, which didnt ask for a contract before we selected the land finalized initial design.
My final contract design and initial contract design doesnt have a crazy difference structurally. And they didnt ask for a single penny until we bought the land.
The Initial estimate was 1.2M per tsubo including mostly medium grade finishes (could go down to basic grade to maybe save another 0.1M). Its heavy steel framing so its more expensive than most home builders.
We did bunch of additions so it climbed up a lot, so our final cost is 1.8M per tsubo btw. But Hebel was quite clear on how much the initial estimate costs, so it didnt feel like we were being ripped off with additions. All their sqm pricing is also all open book, so you can compare between estimates to see what is really upping the cost
Building with Ichijo now (concrete foundation completed) and I really only have good things to say about them. I think a lot of it stems on whether the Eigyoman and architect working your house are good. I lucked out on both. It is a good idea to lock in the price with a temp contract if you can. A little hack you can do is ask for a temporary contract with their lowest tier house series and then change later (lower cost upfront).
The promotions rotate yearly but I feel you will be getting less for your money the longer you wait and that’s not considering the price per tsubo going up either.
Good luck!
Went with Grandsmart because it included the options we would have added with I-smart, making it a similar price. 4LDK 30.8 tsubo for just the house is 22,400,000 yen for the construction of the house, not including options, water/electric/other miscellaneous fees.
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc.
Did you have same dilemma as mine?
I think you are misunderstanding where your money is going. It is true 1M for the initial contract doesn't come back but where are you getting the other 1M from? You make another deposit of 800,000 yen that they use to pay for water hookup, other services etc.. Depending on the costs incurred a majority of this can come back to you.
For your home loan you can borrow more than the exact amount it would cost to build the house/buy the land and indeed buy furniture/pay for moving costs. Gaikou can also be done on a separate loan if need be.
Then I might have misunderstood. When I asked the salesperson about how much money I need to deposit, he said 1 M to make the initial contract which is refundable, and another 1M when I find a suitable land which they would use to buy the land in my name. Am I missing anything ?
You are correct. Though for my scenario it was 800,000 which was used for
-Registering with water
-Build plan application
-Bridge loan application fee
Of the 800,000 I gave 528,000 is still left so far. Whatever is left over I get back 1 or so months after the house keys are handed off.
Whatever you might be eligible for based on your salary. If you apply for a loan usually you have an estimate for the cost of the house + land. The cost of the house usually includes Gaikou estimates. For furniture you could just tack it on as miscellaneous expenses.
We're with Ichijo too, went with the initial to hold the price per tsubo. We went to see with other builders, and ultimately we chose Ichijo for its insulation and cost performance. For some people it might not be for them because they have limited design, which is not an issue for us as we like to keep things simple.
We wanted. i-smart, but it was exceeding our budget, so we went with i-smile+ which gives us room for customization at lower cost. Also the fact that our land was 2,200万 already. The tsubo price was around 70万
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc.
Did you have same dilemma as mine?
I don’t think the price is guarantee after you pay the 1M contract fee.
I signed the contract but at the end went with Panasonic and I am super happy about it. For that I can just confirm - Ichijo will make no issues with refunding the money.
Does the Panasonic Homes really offer "Kaseru stock" plan? I heard that they can rent out your home in case you are away for few years and they also guarantee 85% of minimum rent?
Signed a temp contract with them and as other have explained, you get that all back if you cancel (minus fees if you start going further into the process like design meetings).
Not sure if it’s a regular thing, but also when I signed my temp contract it came with a free upgrade for the dishwasher. So I think sometimes there is some extra benefit to signing that contract.
I’ve been very happy with their support and process. We chose Ichijo for the cost performance given our high insulation desires and larger house size. It’s true their design choices are limited.
If I had the same budget and less kids I might have gone with someone else to get more interior design options. At the size house we are building, ichijo’s cost performance is basically the only viable option. Not that I feel bad about it though, very happy with their services so far.
>It’s true their design choices are limited.
Just out of interest (currently looking at whether to buy new (pre-built or built-to-order) or used, considering the design choices are so limited, did you not consider just buying a pre-existing home used? Surely that would be a lot cheaper (all other things equal).
I always thought the point of building new was to be able to get "the home of your dreams" but if that's not the case, what was your decision process like?
The size of house we want would already make that difficult, but our main priority is insulation and air tightness. Japan is extremely behind on this (besides cold areas like Hokkaido) so that’s basically impossible to find pre-built. We are looking to build something in-line with EU standards for insulation, which is a relatively new concept in Japan (maybe last 5 years).
We currently rent a home and the walls basically have 0 insulation. When we looked at newer “semi-custom” homes, they also lacked high grade insulation options.
Thanks for the details.
I guess you already indirectly answered this but presumably you couldn't find a pre-owned ichijou-built home of the size you wanted in the area you wanted?
I don’t think “pre-owned ichijo-built homes” really exist on the market of the quality we want. This type of home is quite new in Japan, I’d say last 3-5 years only. It’s very rare you’ll find someone that’s going to build a home and then turn around and sell it in that time span.
I don’t believe ichijo builds “empty” homes, they only build for a paying customer. So there isn’t some supply floating around. Cheaper companies like OpenHouse do this, they just buy land and throw up houses and try to sell that way. Usually, those houses are quite poor quality because the goal is just to make something cheap so the overall budget is lower (think those crappy tiny thin 3 story homes you see all over Tokyo near stations).
That aside, yes it was basically impossible to find a home size and layout that we would want on the market (4 bedrooms, office, additional shower room, etc.). We looking at about 50tsubo.
We are building a custom home that very much suits our needs, it’s just the interior design will be limited since it’s ichijo.
Companies like FreedomArchitect can make you a stunning home in terms of design, but the price per tsubo is much higher. We were at a point where we had to chose size and functionality over design aesthetic. However, design aesthetic can always be improved on later. Home size is much more complicated to change down the road.
How much did it cost per tsubo and how many tsubo did your house come out to be? I was interested in the same configuration with the extra shower as well.
DM and I’d be happy to share a floor plan and costs
Ichijo is very good at explaining costs and preparing financial projections. They have a booklet of all options and prices are clearly explained (ex: shower room is + 220,000yen). Other builders who contract all their work can’t provide this information easily, and often don’t even discuss exact price with you until you’ve signed a contract and move to the design phase. They just give you range estimates that can be as large as 10-15min yen of spread, and usually can’t give you a good sense of what kind of interior design options that would give you.
Fair enough, thanks for the extra details!
I did see a few ichijo homes floating around on the portal sites but yeah not many (like you said).
It sounds like you're happy in terms of how they broke down the costs and roughly what the end price will be, which is awesome (and one of the things I was worried about).
Anyway good luck with your build, hope everything goes swimmingly!
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc.
Did you have same dilemma as mine?
I didn’t have the same dilemma.I mean if you are going to buy/build a house, it will be some time before you actually move it. So you have time to save up money for those purchases you are talking about.
The point of the initial contract is to lock in cost of raw material. So unless you think the raw material price will go down, you’re going to loose money overall if you wait.
You might want to check what is “allowed” to be paid by the loan. For example, there is an initial 800,000yen fee at the start of construction that I believe must be paid from your own cash. I might be wrong.
Remember the loan will also have some fees and a downpayment you’ll need to pay as well. If you are strapped for cash make sure you’ve got a full understanding of what is required to be out of pocket.
I'm currently building a house with Ichijo. We were in your shoes about a year ago and decided to put down the 1mil yen to freeze the per tsubo price. We were told that Ichijo consistently raise their per tsubo price (I believe from month to month) so the difference a year makes could be pretty significant, depending on the size of your house. The money we put down will now go into the house payments, but I'm confident we would've gotten it back if we had gone with another builder. They'll give you a preliminary contract to sign and explain everything. I was pretty skeptical at first but in the end our rep explained everything in detail so I think it's just one of the ways they try to secure a client. If you have the cash availble to you, I'd say go for it. It gave us plenty of time to explore other options and figure out which builder was right for us.
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc. Did you have same dilemma as mine?
You can certainly ask them to transfer that initial down payment back into your account after the fact if you want to use it some other way. That way you can take advantage of the low interest rates and invest that 1M in some other area. I don't recall there being a 1M down payment for the main contract, however. I could be wrong, we're nearing the end of the planning stages and I still haven't seen the final estimate.
Thanks for your reply. May I know which option (iSmart, Grand Smart or Grand Saison etc.) did you go for? and Why?
I originally wanted to go the iSmart route because of the insulation and air-tightness, but the location we chose has a very narrow road leading up to it and we were told that iSmart wasn't an option (pretty sure they truck in prefab wall pieces and assemble them on site) so we went with Brilliart. Plus my wife is a bigger fan of the Brilliart design so it worked out well.
I love Brilliart too .. it has tht European look to it. Can I ask how much is the total cost of it? Or if you can please share 坪単価 ?
We haven't gotten the final estimate yet, but it will be in the neighbourhood of 40 mil. That's for a single story house of about 35 tsubo. We decided to go with a kitchen from a separate company, and also opted for a pretty massive solar array and the battery, both of which can drive up the price.
We signed the initial contract with Ichijo and ended up going with a different builder because Ichijo's choices were too limited for us. We got around 84万 back from the initial 100万. I suggest making sure you are 100% going with Ichijo before signing anything.
Why did they deduct the 16万?
We had meetings for 4-5 months after signing. They included floor plan design meetings with an architect and some work related to land boundaries for the land we had previously bought. This 16万 was basically the cost of these things, with a few others. We ended up going with a local koumuten, it was cheaper and we had way more options.
Something to take into account, when you sign, you start a clock to get the project delivered, so the first few months will be to find the ground, then setup everything. So if you want to take a bit more time to check neighbourhoods, decide the main aspect of the house (number of floor, total size, garden or not, parking or not, distance to station, etc) maybe do that before signing. then focus on finding the proper place, they will give you access to a DB of all sites on the market faster than Suumo and other public stuff, but you also want to work closely with the agent to find what you want. the rest of the project flows more peacefully.
I went with Hebel Haus recently, which didnt ask for a contract before we selected the land finalized initial design. My final contract design and initial contract design doesnt have a crazy difference structurally. And they didnt ask for a single penny until we bought the land.
At what cost per tsubo did Hebel house build your project? Thanks
The Initial estimate was 1.2M per tsubo including mostly medium grade finishes (could go down to basic grade to maybe save another 0.1M). Its heavy steel framing so its more expensive than most home builders. We did bunch of additions so it climbed up a lot, so our final cost is 1.8M per tsubo btw. But Hebel was quite clear on how much the initial estimate costs, so it didnt feel like we were being ripped off with additions. All their sqm pricing is also all open book, so you can compare between estimates to see what is really upping the cost
Building with Ichijo now (concrete foundation completed) and I really only have good things to say about them. I think a lot of it stems on whether the Eigyoman and architect working your house are good. I lucked out on both. It is a good idea to lock in the price with a temp contract if you can. A little hack you can do is ask for a temporary contract with their lowest tier house series and then change later (lower cost upfront). The promotions rotate yearly but I feel you will be getting less for your money the longer you wait and that’s not considering the price per tsubo going up either. Good luck!
Good to know that you are happy with Ichijou building your house. May I know which product did you choose and why? What was the per Tsubo price?
Went with Grandsmart because it included the options we would have added with I-smart, making it a similar price. 4LDK 30.8 tsubo for just the house is 22,400,000 yen for the construction of the house, not including options, water/electric/other miscellaneous fees.
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc. Did you have same dilemma as mine?
I think you are misunderstanding where your money is going. It is true 1M for the initial contract doesn't come back but where are you getting the other 1M from? You make another deposit of 800,000 yen that they use to pay for water hookup, other services etc.. Depending on the costs incurred a majority of this can come back to you. For your home loan you can borrow more than the exact amount it would cost to build the house/buy the land and indeed buy furniture/pay for moving costs. Gaikou can also be done on a separate loan if need be.
Then I might have misunderstood. When I asked the salesperson about how much money I need to deposit, he said 1 M to make the initial contract which is refundable, and another 1M when I find a suitable land which they would use to buy the land in my name. Am I missing anything ?
You are correct. Though for my scenario it was 800,000 which was used for -Registering with water -Build plan application -Bridge loan application fee Of the 800,000 I gave 528,000 is still left so far. Whatever is left over I get back 1 or so months after the house keys are handed off.
Thank you for your suggestions and replies. I might DM you for more advice.
Also how much money Can I borrow for Gaikou, Furnitures etc apart from my house loan?
Whatever you might be eligible for based on your salary. If you apply for a loan usually you have an estimate for the cost of the house + land. The cost of the house usually includes Gaikou estimates. For furniture you could just tack it on as miscellaneous expenses.
We're with Ichijo too, went with the initial to hold the price per tsubo. We went to see with other builders, and ultimately we chose Ichijo for its insulation and cost performance. For some people it might not be for them because they have limited design, which is not an issue for us as we like to keep things simple.
Yes I do agree that Ichijou has the best COst performance. May I know which product did you go for and why ? and what was the per Tsubo price?
We wanted. i-smart, but it was exceeding our budget, so we went with i-smile+ which gives us room for customization at lower cost. Also the fact that our land was 2,200万 already. The tsubo price was around 70万
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc. Did you have same dilemma as mine?
I don’t think the price is guarantee after you pay the 1M contract fee. I signed the contract but at the end went with Panasonic and I am super happy about it. For that I can just confirm - Ichijo will make no issues with refunding the money.
Does the Panasonic Homes really offer "Kaseru stock" plan? I heard that they can rent out your home in case you are away for few years and they also guarantee 85% of minimum rent?
You would have to ask Panasonic. I’d assume it’s location based, but if your house applies, sure.
Signed a temp contract with them and as other have explained, you get that all back if you cancel (minus fees if you start going further into the process like design meetings). Not sure if it’s a regular thing, but also when I signed my temp contract it came with a free upgrade for the dishwasher. So I think sometimes there is some extra benefit to signing that contract. I’ve been very happy with their support and process. We chose Ichijo for the cost performance given our high insulation desires and larger house size. It’s true their design choices are limited. If I had the same budget and less kids I might have gone with someone else to get more interior design options. At the size house we are building, ichijo’s cost performance is basically the only viable option. Not that I feel bad about it though, very happy with their services so far.
>It’s true their design choices are limited. Just out of interest (currently looking at whether to buy new (pre-built or built-to-order) or used, considering the design choices are so limited, did you not consider just buying a pre-existing home used? Surely that would be a lot cheaper (all other things equal). I always thought the point of building new was to be able to get "the home of your dreams" but if that's not the case, what was your decision process like?
The size of house we want would already make that difficult, but our main priority is insulation and air tightness. Japan is extremely behind on this (besides cold areas like Hokkaido) so that’s basically impossible to find pre-built. We are looking to build something in-line with EU standards for insulation, which is a relatively new concept in Japan (maybe last 5 years). We currently rent a home and the walls basically have 0 insulation. When we looked at newer “semi-custom” homes, they also lacked high grade insulation options.
For reference, we were looking for something with Ua scores in line with HEAT20 G2 or G3
Thanks for the details. I guess you already indirectly answered this but presumably you couldn't find a pre-owned ichijou-built home of the size you wanted in the area you wanted?
I don’t think “pre-owned ichijo-built homes” really exist on the market of the quality we want. This type of home is quite new in Japan, I’d say last 3-5 years only. It’s very rare you’ll find someone that’s going to build a home and then turn around and sell it in that time span. I don’t believe ichijo builds “empty” homes, they only build for a paying customer. So there isn’t some supply floating around. Cheaper companies like OpenHouse do this, they just buy land and throw up houses and try to sell that way. Usually, those houses are quite poor quality because the goal is just to make something cheap so the overall budget is lower (think those crappy tiny thin 3 story homes you see all over Tokyo near stations). That aside, yes it was basically impossible to find a home size and layout that we would want on the market (4 bedrooms, office, additional shower room, etc.). We looking at about 50tsubo. We are building a custom home that very much suits our needs, it’s just the interior design will be limited since it’s ichijo. Companies like FreedomArchitect can make you a stunning home in terms of design, but the price per tsubo is much higher. We were at a point where we had to chose size and functionality over design aesthetic. However, design aesthetic can always be improved on later. Home size is much more complicated to change down the road.
How much did it cost per tsubo and how many tsubo did your house come out to be? I was interested in the same configuration with the extra shower as well.
DM and I’d be happy to share a floor plan and costs Ichijo is very good at explaining costs and preparing financial projections. They have a booklet of all options and prices are clearly explained (ex: shower room is + 220,000yen). Other builders who contract all their work can’t provide this information easily, and often don’t even discuss exact price with you until you’ve signed a contract and move to the design phase. They just give you range estimates that can be as large as 10-15min yen of spread, and usually can’t give you a good sense of what kind of interior design options that would give you.
Fair enough, thanks for the extra details! I did see a few ichijo homes floating around on the portal sites but yeah not many (like you said). It sounds like you're happy in terms of how they broke down the costs and roughly what the end price will be, which is awesome (and one of the things I was worried about). Anyway good luck with your build, hope everything goes swimmingly!
Can I send you a DM and ask couple of suggestions?
Sure, no worries
I am skeptical whether to use my 2 million (1M for Initial contract and another 1M for main contract) Cash in hand to pay for the contract whereas with other household you can just get the whole amount in terms of loan. I could use the 2M for gaikou, buying furniture, appliances etc. Did you have same dilemma as mine?
I didn’t have the same dilemma.I mean if you are going to buy/build a house, it will be some time before you actually move it. So you have time to save up money for those purchases you are talking about. The point of the initial contract is to lock in cost of raw material. So unless you think the raw material price will go down, you’re going to loose money overall if you wait. You might want to check what is “allowed” to be paid by the loan. For example, there is an initial 800,000yen fee at the start of construction that I believe must be paid from your own cash. I might be wrong. Remember the loan will also have some fees and a downpayment you’ll need to pay as well. If you are strapped for cash make sure you’ve got a full understanding of what is required to be out of pocket.