Getting a Mortgage in Japan

To peter

Can you tell me what you know about borrowing money from Japanese banks or lenders.

Thank you
Milio

The thought crossed my mind that the lenders this side of the world are actually borrowing yen at 0.5% and selling it to us at 5-7% and of course they will try and put people off from going straight to Japan.

It seems like the website (provided by a poster earlier) for the ECU Group Plc informs that cross currency deals ended up in a net loss of about 4pct for the clients in the year 2007 to date. In a favorable previous year, the net savings on the debt did not exceed about 12pct. The fees charged by the intermediary can be hefty. So, many things to think about.

I tried contacting the Bank of Tokyo's office in several cities in USA and spoke to high officials there. But no luck. They showed no interest and seemed to rush to end the conversation, so unlike my regular bankers. I think it would be difficult to get foreign lenders interested because of possible problems with enforcing the contract should there be problems in future.

So in reading the discussions it occurs that one could hedge your mortgage with the Japanese Bank in two ways: 1) Set up a highly leveraged forex account, maintain necessary margins, and therefore end up with neither a net loss or gain on the currency side and achieve your ideal result of saving money on the mortgage interest payments. 2) Insure it for foreclosure...uncommon forms of insurance are always possible but sometimes prohibitively expensive. I am interested if anyone has managed to obtain a loan with just a japanese bank account? Obviously many banks are multinational and have a unit established in Japan. Is it possible to set up a legal entity in Japan to service the loan and therefore satisfy many different nationalist requirements? I am really curious how Peter's investigations have turned out? Thanks, -Chris

All of the approaches I have see so far have see to carry potential of considerable risk. It sounds you're saying it is possible to significantly reduce the risk using hedging approaches. I should of thought of this sooner since all sorts of industries are using similar approaches to limit risk such as electric power plants for the price of the price they use.

Do you have time this week to talk further? I have computer software that can be used to monitor and adjust prices automatically.

Thank you for your information.

Could you please send a website and/or phone# for a Japanese Estate Agent as I cannot seem to find a Japanese Estate Agent website that has the bank you listed.

Thank you very much in advance.

Peter

Hello, I have been employing this strategy successfully for years. In fact with leverage I have obtained a return of 3-4% per month consistently, and have always hedged, thus reducing my risk to 0.
I live in Australia.
If you are interested in all the details still (forum is fairly old) contact me at jamestownfx at gmail dot com
Cheers