Vol.31 - How to qualify for mortgage financing for residential property in the US & Looking for a House - Your Real Estate Agent (Part 1)

**CONTENTS**

-Feature - How to qualify for mortgage financing for residential property in the US
-From the Editor
-Forex Weekly
-Yen Watch
-Events
-Job Watch
*Please scroll down below to read the disclaimer*

FEATURE

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How to qualify for mortgage financing for residential property in the US
(By James Robinson, Propius Investments Ltd. | October 20, 2005 | Comment on this Article)

So you have decided that you want to take advantage of the financial benefits of investing in residential property in the United States. You have completed your goals and planning document. You have saved your down payment money. You have researched and selected the real estate market that you think has the most upside potential. Now you need to find financing and get pre-approved.

Click here to read more....

FROM THE EDITOR

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Looking for a House - Your Real Estate Agent (Part One)

An essential contributor to successfully finding and buying a home is your real estate agent. There is virtually no market for private sales in Japan, and even if you find a plot out in the countryside which takes your fancy, you need find an agent which is handling that property and who will intermediate with the owner for you. Why the fixation on using agents I’m not sure, but would guess that because land has traditionally been so expensive here, buying a home is a once-in-a-lifetime activity and people are just scared to do what they’re not familiar with.

Choosing the right agent can be important - both in terms of finding the right spot and also negotiating. In a large city like Tokyo, and I imagine Osaka and elsewhere, the better agents know in depth which land is for sale or will be coming on to the market in the next few months. Such knowledge allows you to focus on a favored locale, then keep working the agent until he/she comes up with something that meets your needs. It could be that a family is considering selling part of their holdings, but just hasn’t got around to it yet, or an aged relation is about to pass-away, and thus the family home will have to be put up for sale so the kids can meet their death duties obligation.

In principal, agents in Japan earn 6% on a real estate transaction, 3% from the seller and 3% from the buyer. In fact, recently in downtown Tokyo anyway, real estate development companies are aggressively and speculatively buying up any land that becomes available and becoming the only sellers in the market. Apparently in their race to make a buck, they are becoming less willing to pay the seller commission. The impact on the realtors is becoming noticeable - in particular, they now want to focus on more expensive property, so as to make their traditional income. That means if you want to buy somewhere cheaper, you’ll either be dealing directly with a developer, or a small local realtor in a dingy office located a couple of blocks from the station.

Finding a real estate agent to look after you is as simple as calling them or walking in off the street. Recently agents have become aware that there are foreign REITs behind some of the price boom going on in inner Tokyo, and they are treating foreign customers a lot better than they did. Pick a larger agent with a chain of stores or a major website, and you’ll be in good hands. In a recent house search myself, both my wife and I did our own contacting of agents. She used the web (more about where to look next week), while I focused on areas I liked and actually visited them, then found a major Real Estate agent chain nearby.

The difference in experiences was quite interesting. One of the first places I visited was Century 21 Open House center in Shibuya. I was invited to sit down, fill out a form (in Japanese, although they offered to have someone help if I needed it), do an interview, then look through their files for interesting properties. To be honest, it’s pretty hard to tell what a certain piece of land looks like from Japanese agents’ data, because usually you get a little hand-drawn diagram showing in black and white the layout of the property, the width of the entrance and road, and notes about pluses and minuses of the location. No photos, and no idea of what the neighborhood is actually like. This was the major reason I decided to go personally to areas that interested me. With pre-built houses, things are a little better, in that about 50% of the time you will actually get an external photo, but few internal ones.

Anyway, having given them a price, the Century 21 Open House folks brought out a huge stack of property plans. What you will soon find out is that almost every property to hit the market is listed with just about every agent covering that area. My understanding is that there are sole agency arrangements but are few and far between. Instead, one agent will be the primary contact, they try for a few weeks to sell by themselves, then start listing the property through other agents with bigger sales networks. Thus, going to more than 2-3 agents to cover a particular area is probably a waste of time.

Terrie Lloyd
・・・Investor in Training/

FOREX WEEKLY

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Team Tokyo Forex Weekly
October 13th - October 18th, 2005

Ode to the US Dollar.

Well you have to hand it to Uncle Sam, he has endured what seems to be the unendurable. It is amazing what has taken place in the US over the past few weeks and months and the dollar just keeps bouncing back.

Hurricanes on the Florida Coast, flooding in NY State, raging bush fires in California ,riots in Toledo and massive pythons and an African Lizard outbreak in Miami, not to forget the State of Oregan's more adventurous decision to make public sex acts legal as part of the constitutional right of 'Freedom of opinion'.

Speaking of opinion, Iraq is poised to have it's first constitutional government.

After voting took place last weekend and the surprise turn around of the support from Sunni groups made a spectacular show of confidence in the war against terrorism.

I am not one to deviate but International public opinion and local opinion of the US is at a major low at the moment. Taking all of these events into account you would wonder how the US is surviving and showing such great strength in the market place.

A while back when Bush was up for re-election I was traveling through Tokyo and touched down in a Gaijin (Foreigners) House, a place where foreigners can stay for a period of time in an environment half way between a back packers Hostel and a Hotel. They are very convenient if you have long stays in Tokyo and don't like going at it alone.

Again I am not one to deviate but I was staying in this House with 2 Democrats and a couple of other Europeans and I would quietly avoid the political arguments that went late into the night at times.

The reason why? Well, mostly because even though I did not like the idea of a potential world war, I do believe that some amount of necessary force is required to help people experience freedom and give them options that allow them to express their opinions freely (I am a closet Democrat with tendencies to be more of a Republican).

How we achieve this process is sometimes questionable and often riddled with mis-management but experience is a teacher and perhaps we can extend Democracy through out the world in a safer more passive process if individuals continue to exercise their right to freedom and boost the economy by opening a Trading account thus giving more financial support to the Democratic Economies.

We don't just trade and make money, we trade to ensure our Democratic rights are safe guarded. (The Editor)

Despite the weakness of Friday’s data, the US dollar is starting the week off on a strong note, trading higher against all the major currency pairs except for the Canadian dollar, which has managed to regain ground against the greenback following last week’s late sell-off.

The main attraction of the day will be Fed Chairman Greenspan’s speech on energy which is scheduled to begin this evening at 9:30 pm. Prior to that, however, Philadelphia Fed President Santomero will be speaking about monetary policy at 4:30 pm.

The dollar is rallying across amid mostly technical buying, taking the euro to 10 week highs around the $1.1880s, while hovering at 2-year highs against the yen at 115.96.Stop loss triggers cascading through the 115.50-115.80s amid falling JGB yields. Markets will scrutinize today’s batch of Fed speakers which should reflect the impact from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. As we mentioned earlier, observers will want to scrutinize whether the Fed speakers will introduce any concerns about slowing growth rather than the usual talk of inflation.

But the market will also keep its eye on the September housing starts/permits to survey the extent of the cooling in the housing market. We have seen how Mortgage applications have edged lower over the past 4 weeks, which could prompt some new positioning in the bond market as far as Fed moves are concerned according to Forex News.com

Click here to view the break down of the Forex Currency Top Pairs Performance for this year to date
http://www.japaninc.com/jic_magazine_web/y/forex1.html












Team Tokyo Forex Chart
USDJPY 18:00pm Tokyo time August 19 2005

Don't forget you can get this report and more Japan based news by subscribing at our website http://www.tokyo-forex-japan.com/. We also stream Video Forex News reports courtesy of Forex Tv.com.

Team Tokyo Forex. Tokyo's best kept secret.

YEN WATCH

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Currency	10/10 Mon	10/11 Tue	10/12 Wed	10/13 Thu	10/14 Fri
USD	n/a	115.18	115.63	115.57	115.77
GBP	n/a	202.67	202.44	203.14	203.74
EUR	n/a	138.90	138.69	139.23	139.34
CAD	n/a	98.58	98.93	99.35	98.67
HKD	n/a	15.13	15.18	15.17	15.20
SGD	n/a	68.53	68.64	68.57	68.73
AUD	n/a	88.37	88.10	88.47	87.97

(The above TTS Exchange Rates has been brought to you by the courtesy of GoLloyds TSB)
The above rates were posted at 10:09 on Friday, October 14, 2005 and are valid for funds received before 3:00 pm on Friday, October 14, 2005. All funds received after 3:00 pm are remitted the following day at the following day's exchange rates. The exchange rates provided are intended only as a guide. The Bank reserves the right to apply a different exchange rate if the market is particularly volatile.

EVENT

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ICA Event
October 20th, 2005

Presenter - Gary Blankenship, Technical Director in Japan for Foundry Networks
Topic - The Next Generation of Internet Protocol – Opportunities and Challenges for Enterprises in Japan

RSVP: Complete event details at http://www.icajapan.jp/
Date: Thursday, October 20, 2005
Time: 6:30 Doors open, sit down dinner included
Cost: 3,000 yen (members), 5,500 yen (non-members),

Open to all - Location is Foreign Correspondents'
Club: http://www.fccj.or.jp/static/aboutus/map.php

JOB WATCH

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Brought to you by DaiJob, Inc – providing jobs for bilinguals.

- Product Specialist (Pre-Sales) - Treasury (JPY 7-12M)
- Compliance Officer (Negotiable)
- Operations Manager (Negotiable)
- Vice President, Corporate Purchasing (Negotiable)
- Head of Regulatory Reporting/VH (JPY 10-13M)

Check out these and other jobs like these here!

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Edited by Burritt Sabin ([email protected])

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Disclaimer: This commentary is designed to help foreigners living in Japan understand the financial and investment opportunities available to them. It is NOT intended to constitute professional financial advice or an inducement to purchase the services and products mentioned. A condition of subscribing to this newsletter or reading this web site is that any actions taken by readers as a consequence of reading this column shall be the sole responsibility of the reader and no liability, implied or otherwise shall be assumed by Lloyd, Japan Inc. Communications, or other business entities related to either person.

© Japan Inc. Communications, 2005

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