Tldr: partner got blacklisted due to unpaid phone bills so cannot get a house loan until at least 5 years later. If I borrow a loan on my own, the budget is significantly lowered and I can’t find any house that I feel comfortable buying.
Hi, I’m using a throwaway account because of personal information.
I am 31F, have PR, employed at a listed company and have decent yearly income. My partner 31M also has PR, employed at a start up but also have decent yearly income. We both work in Tokyo, and live in 23ku area. Our current rental apartment mansion is great, reasonable price, newly built (living here for 4 years, the building is now 10 years old), and it allows pet cats. However as we plan to have babies soon, this current place will be too small, and I’m afraid rentals that allow cat are very rare, expended, old, and far away from the station. I am not sure how much longer we will live in Japan (we’ve been here 15 years), but this is where we start contemplating buying.
The original plan is for both spouses to apply to a pair loan, opening up the budget to about 150 mil yen to buy a decent mansion that’s 5 minutes to a station. However, we just recently figure out my partner has unpaid phone bills from 2018 so he got blacklisted from banks. Just paid off the amount but real estate agents said we have to wait at least 5 years until the blacklist status is removed.
We had to think about applying for loans under only my name. But here is where a lot of issues appeared:
– Even though I told my real estate agent to change my 仮審査 from a pair loan to single loan and change the amount applied after finding out about the unpaid debt, somehow the real estate agent still say multiple banks failed my application because “the household has negative influence”. I called out this BS because if I am applying individually, then the banks have no business looking at my partner’s credit history nor make any judgement upon it. If anything the bank is using our sensitive information without our consent. (To be clear, I fully understand it’s hard for my gaijin partner to be approved with unpaid credit albeit how small it is, I am not satisfied with the reason they gave as due to “household” issues). Real estate agent insisted that once bank got a hold of a risk information they would not close their eyes, and that married couples are indeed within reasonable range of inspection for such big loans like housing loans.
– When changed to a single loan, our budget decreased by half. With that budget, you can only get really old mansions (built about 30yrs or even 50yrs ago), plus needing reno. Not only do I feel worried about the quality of old buildings, and I feel not as satisfied compared to the candidates I had before, it is even harder to get banks to approve full building price loans, plus reno fees on top of it.
Right now our family has been heavily investing our free cash, so we don’t have a large chunk of money for down payment.
I also feel very reluctant to find houses further away from center Tokyo, as commuting to work is already 45 mins now and I can’t tolerate longer commutes.
– If we wait 5 years, I don’t even know how much longer our family will keep living in Japan to justify buying
Sages of Reddit, please help me think which direction should I go next? I am very lost.
by ChampionshipLimp950