I'm looking to upgrade.. My rental term in my apartment expires next month so I'm looking for something that gives me a bit more bang for my buck, since the place that I'm staying in right now is about 120 sqft and costs nearly $700 a month.. not cheap.. so I've waded into the arena of Japanese real estate agencies. But you may ask yourself, why does he need a real estate agent if he's not buying anything? Well, this is Japan and the old rules no longer apply. Apparently you need to go through a real estate agent in Japan. But wait, if gets weirder. The real estate agents are allotted apartments to rent by unit, not by building, so for a given apartment building, there may be 4 or 5 real estate agents all renting apartments out.. at different prices..
So what else could possibly be more confusing? Well the rents for one; I said that my place was about $700/mo, well that's not entirely true. My place actually costs about $500 a month.. Where's the extra money come from? Well, I need to pay about $200 for a "negotiation fee", $260 to the real estate agent for services rendered (which to date has consisted of filling out the contract, collecting my money and saving me $2 on a train ride by driving me here on my first day), add on $100 deposit and probably a cleaning fee, or lock replacement charge and voila, instant rip-off.
So I've decided to move, not exclusively because of the cost, because I knew how much it would cost before I came here, but more of the size.. I don't have space to put a desk in, which I would really like to, cause I'm tired of studying on the floor.
In any case, watch this space for more exciting adventures of the habitationally challenged.
2 comments:
Did you say 120 sqft? or do you mean 1200 sqft? How small is 120 sqft? I need to go measure.
no.. I mean 120 sqft.. any way you measure it, its small. Probably the size of an average sized bathroom + a hall closet or two..
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