MY FIRST OVERSEAS DEAL ZIV MAGEN
At my side, Chikako, my amazing wife and
“Units 713 and 813 are conjoined on the title
business partner, is far cooler. Completely calm
deed,” she says. “They were registered as the one
and collected, as a matter of fact. Not only does
property by a previous owner – who could do it,
she speak the language, but she was also born
because they have an adjacent ceiling & floor – to
and raised here. She knows since birth what I have
save on future registration fees during changes of
to take on faith and only a decade of limited
ownership”.
experience.
That is, you can’t get screwed in
Japan. Or, that you’d have to try really, really hard
I blink. She keeps her gaze steady on mine. So do
to find someone who’ll steal from you in this
the three Japanese professionals in the room with
country.
us – our realtor, his “certified document reader”,
and the judicial scrivener there to conduct the
But, it’s still the first time buying property in Japan,
technical aspects of the new registration. I swallow
for both of us. I sip my tea and gaze at her
and ignore the droplets of cold sweat that trickle
admiringly, not forgetting all the while to nod at the
slowly, painstakingly, down my spine. There’s a
right places (meaning, when she does) – and
question coming, I can tell.
letting myself be lulled into a semi-daze, floating
away on the droning murmur of quiet Japanese
She
voices around me.
understand and accept that fact”.
I’m so far gone, in fact, that when she excuses
Going back about two months, we didn’t have a
herself to the suited gentleman in front of her and
clue what we’d get and how. We only knew that we
turns to speak to me in English, suddenly - I almost
wanted high, reliable returns, had about $70,000 to
drop my tea cup.
spend, and that we didn’t know much else.
speaks
again.
“They’re
asking
if
you
Still, we felt reasonably secure.
We’ve
done
our
homework
and
narrowed our locations down to SouthWestern Japan’s Kyushu landmass,
dodged one greedy lawyer to find an
experienced,
tech-savvy
and
affordable judicial scrivener – and had
a long and tiresome (but crucial)
strategy
session
with
our
accountant to map things out.
new