Terminate house purchase agreement

Dear All,

Recently me and my japanese wife have purchased a nice mansion (brand new) that would be ready by April 2008. We have completed all the paperwork, got our house loan approved. However now we are thinking of not going ahead because we both might return to my home country (not japan) to take care of my parents health. The decision to not go ahead is our mutual decision. Has anyone ever terminated any property purchase agreement in japan ? Any advice or suggestions would be highly appreciated. We both are quite worried about not going ahead since we were lookng forward to it. Thank you very much for reading my post.

I don't know up to what extent your arrangement has gone, but the best thing is to read the contract carefully, I'm sure there must be clauses about terminating the contract.
If you've already made a down-payment (atama-kin in Japanese), there's apossibility that you cannot get it back.
A friend of mine once purchased a so-called "mansion" apartment, she made a down-payment, then suddenly she was getting married and cancelled it. The downpayment was not small but she could not get it back bacause it was stipulated in the contract that once you made the down-payment, there'll be no refund even the purchase is not completed.

I agree that you should read the contract carefully. There is a likelihood that you might have to give up the down payment. I think the only instance where you can get the down payment back upon cancellation is when the cancellation is inevitable because your bank did not approve of your loan you were counting on (credit screening).

Dear By and AK,

Thanks for all your comments. Finally our case has resolved and it has taken a new turn altogether. I am happy to share with you.

Yesterday I discussed in detail with my buyer (real estate developer). We have already forwarded a big-size down-payment with some customization requests. Our down-payment + cost of customization layout would be withheld if we terminate our house agreement. This is so because our loan was approved already and our deed has been formally signed by us before our intention to terminate house agreement.
So we decided to keep the house because lumpsum of down-payment and cost of customization is too high to risk. We also have an option to put it on rent or sell it off after april 2008 (when we get the house keys). That way we can stay in my home country for long, take care of our parents and not worry about our house here. :-)

That is a tremendous relief indeed.

Thanks to all those who responded with their best advices.

Please feel free to circulate this thread if needed. There might be rare but few cases like mine that could be helped.