Tornado Alley
I told them it has been used before and stood the test, but... bunch of chickens...!!!Originally Posted by Mom
No worries about them missing a day... learnt A LOT from this sad sorry pair of losers.... 10 day notice has been completed already, awaiting the date only... hope I don't have to use it, is all...
Good talkin... You could talk an eskimo into buying ice.... LOL....
Fair weather rider
What a saga.
uh-oh....
must resist ..nnggh... urge to ..bitch about Japan...
can't ....help...
Patrick you wanna be a landlord in Japan where landlords enjoy an almost god-like status, and tenants take it up the arse at every turn.
This is how it works here, ten easy steps from a tenants perspective:
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1. You see an attractive well-priced apartment advertised and contact the estate agency about it. The apartment that was advertised will have 'just been taken' but would you be interested in these other more expensive crappier ones?
2. Be prepared to find your own way around the city to look at apartments while the agent sits in their air-conditioned office. Often you will actually be liasing with the building manager directly to get directions, while the agent does nothing.
3. Make sure you have a guarantor - someone of 'good standing' in the community, to vouch for you if you renege on your rent payments. If you are Japanese and older than 50 this is usually not necessary. If you are Japanese and younger, your parents will do. Otherwise you better know a Japanese somebody's parents. A non-Japanese is not considered a worthy guarantor unless they are rolling in money or are the CEO of a company, preferably both.
4. Find the best apartment you can and apply to be considered as a tenant. This can take anything up to a month but is usually is decided in a couple of weeks, after which you will be informed (dictated?) the date from which have to start paying rent - never mind that you still have to give a months notice on your current residence (typically this will result in a two week period where you pay two rents). Since non-married couples living together are frowned upon, if you want to live with your girlfriend make sure your guarantor knows to lie for you and say that you are engaged. During the credit check/witch hunt process they will likely ring the guarantor and try to check if you are actually engaged or not (true story). If you are black, um... it might be a good idea to make lots of applications for different apartments. If you are black and from Africa, go back to step 1.
5. If you are lucky enough, the landlord will reach down from his shining throne and give you his holy approval. Now you need to crack open your piggy bank. The landlord can demand any number of months rent up-front, any amount he likes as bond, and any amount he likes for 'key money'. Typically for a average apartment these are "2,2,2" meaning you pay two months rent in advance, two months rent as bond, and two months rent as 'key-money'. There is nothing sinister about the two months rent in advance, but the others are pure evil. Here, the bond money goes straight to the landlord, instead of to a third party as in NZ. This beauty of this system is that there will be no disputes about repairs etc when you leave the apartment, simply because the tenant has no leg to stand on. And what's key-money? Key money is a wonderful Japanese invention where you give the landlord money for nothing. It's just a bribe. This system works firstly because every other landlord does it so there are no better alternatives, and secondly because there are squillions of people vying for limited housing - for every would-be tenant who doesn't want to pay key-money, there are plenty of suckers who will. For a nice apartment, you could be looking at '2,3,3' or even '2,4,4' for a very desres. Oops I almost forgot, you need to pay the agency one months rent for their 'introduction fee' too, even though all they did was photocopy a few sheets of paper and make some phone calls.
6. If you are stupid enough to own a cage in Tokyo, you will have to figure out where you are gonna put that too. Naturally a parking space is not included in the apartment rent, and depending on where you live they can be whoppingly costly too (NZ$600/mo per car space in my current apartment building). Hint: ride a bike!!
7. Live in the apartment. Nervously cringe when you accidentally scrape a chair across a wooden floor, or bump something heavy against the walls. Do not pierce the wallpaper - yes that means you are not to hang anything on the walls. God forbid you should break any windows, or burn something - you would probably be treated like a wild animal for the rest of your term. If any repairs need doing during this time, contact the rental management company, who manage the landlords property for him (the estate agency is completely out of the picture by this point). Don't contact the landlord you dummy, what makes you think he would condescend to talk directly to you? Once your request for repairs has been made, you need to wait for permission from the landlord, via rental management. It is out of the question to attempt any unauthorised repairs. Inevitably the landlord is 'a very important, very busy person' and will be hard to get hold of. What this means is that the landlord is trying to get his buddy's renovation company to do the repairs. Landlords always seem to have buddies who run renovation companies. The fact that you are having cold showers for a week or two in the meantime is completely irrelevant, so stop whining. What's that? You want to screw another door over where you broke that window?? ArE yOu nUtS?!?
8. If you are looking at a long term stay be aware that there is a 'contract renewal' fee, typically every two years. This can be any amount the landlord decides but is usually one or two months rent. In return for paying this renewal fee you get.... nothing. Well I guess you are supposed to consider living there to be such a privelege that it is worth grovelling some more.
9. Give your notice. Usually, you will meet with some agency or another to 'authorise' the use of the bond money, but they are just as happy to do it in your absence. Either way you will 'agree' to having all your bond money used up in mostly unnecessary repairs to the apartment. I say 'agree' in quotes because that is what Japanese sheeple do. I however have a tendency to fly off the handle when I see $4500 of my good money stolen from right under my nose. The repairs can be whatever the landlord and his renovation buddy feel like they want to repair. Any tatami floor will be replaced as a matter of course. After that its the wallpaper (all of it) and the carpet if there is any (all of it). If there are any fly-screen type doors they will also need to be replaced if any of the netting has the slightest tear or hole in it. A whole multitude of other things will be needing replacement too, and the final cost will come to a few hundred dollars more than your bond money. The reason it is a little more is so they can say 'we really should be charging you more for this', and make you feel like you got something for free...
You can argue at great length (and I have) that this thing or that thing does not need fixing, but the crux of the matter is, your bond money is in their bank account so you might as well be talking to a brick wall. Basically, anything that can be determined to have changed even slightly from the condition it was when you moved in is a target for replacement - even if it's as miniscule as: "If you stand here and look at the wall from this angle with the sun shining like that, you can see a faint mark there right? Looks like somebody made a dent when they were vacuuming the floor hmmm?" (true story).
Often I am dead certain that some of the renovations they claim to be doing never actually get done. I left an apartment after living there barely nine months, after which all kinds of things apparently needed replacing. They 'forgot' to tell me when the meeting would be and when they did call it was just to notify me that all the repairs had been completed and my bond was all gone. When I asked if I could go see the changes I was told no, the new tenants had already moved in... a seemingly impossible feat considering the length of time I had been made to wait for his landlordship to give his holy blessing!
10. Time to leave. Don't bother cleaning anything since you will be paying a couple hundred dollars cleaning fee as well. At the same time you cant leave it in a pigsty because you will get done for that too, I'm just saying don't try to make it spick'n'span yourself in an attempt to avoid the cleaning fee. Even if there is nothing that could possibly be any cleaner, you will still be charged for 'cleaning' anyway.
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As you can see the situation is the complete opposite here. Nobody looks out for the tenant, and you have to be very careful when renting. You will get shafted for sure, there are no two ways about it - all you can do is try to get shafted less.
Man I can write when I rant eh? I guess I am still hurting from February when I moved into my current place. I had to fork out a tad over NZ$10,000 just to get in the door!! You can bet a system like this would keep those dead-beats out!
Tornado Alley
Bugger that situation in Japan...!!!
UPDATE:
Got rung by the court, just as I was getting out of the shower, to say they had fronted up to the courts themselves to be assessed on how to pay.
Told them I was at least 30 mins away and the bailiff suggests that they be arrested on the warrant and bailed to court today...
Hmmm... let me think about that one!!!
Lock their sorry arses up I said.... and they did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thought about going in today but already knew what the outcome would be, so had a bloody good sleep-in instead...
Called the courts and found out, just as expected... she has no income so no order can be made against her... which is fine...
He is on ACC and can only pay $10 per week, for the whole amount owing, which is actually $5 more than I thought I would get, so... it is a beginning...
Still to get the registered 2nd hand dealer around to check out the stuff in storage. That will come off the bill for what he takes. The rest is DEFINITELY going to the tip or to the Corso Shop. The ex tenants aren't getting it dumped on thier doorstep this time, as the stuff in storage is actually useful to the needy I suppose...
Wherever I may roam
Good on ya for seeing it all the way through mate and nailing the bastards.
"I came into this game for the action, the excitement... go anywhere, travel light,... get in, get out,... wherever there's trouble, a man alone... Now they got the whole country sectioned off; you can't make a move without a form."
Paved roads are just another example of wasted tax payer dollars.
Griso di forza
Excellent news. this has sure been a long running afair, and you stuck to your guns, where as I resigned to the fact that they disapeared and I lost determination to get anything out of them.
Good on ya dude!!!!!
Just faidin away!
Hi Patrick.Bugger that situation in Japan...!!!
UPDATE:
Got rung by the court, just as I was getting out of the shower, to say they had fronted up to the courts themselves to be assessed on how to pay.
Told them I was at least 30 mins away and the bailiff suggests that they be arrested on the warrant and bailed to court today...
Hmmm... let me think about that one!!!
Lock their sorry arses up I said.... and they did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thought about going in today but already knew what the outcome would be, so had a bloody good sleep-in instead...
Called the courts and found out, just as expected... she has no income so no order can be made against her... which is fine...
He is on ACC and can only pay $10 per week, for the whole amount owing, which is actually $5 more than I thought I would get, so... it is a beginning...
Still to get the registered 2nd hand dealer around to check out the stuff in storage. That will come off the bill for what he takes. The rest is DEFINITELY going to the tip or to the Corso Shop. The ex tenants aren't getting it dumped on thier doorstep this time, as the stuff in storage is actually useful to the needy I suppose...
So here we are today, 30 October 2007 and this thread has gone cool now.
Obviously you succeeded in ridding yourself of these vermin but how much have you been left "out of pocket" as a result?
(roughly, not personal info)
It sure was a long drawn out bloody process!Cheers John.
Homo Sapiens Vulgaris
Good job on getting them sorted out.
Tenants can be a pain - I know despite not being a landlord. My girlfriend and I are renting a place and are then taking in a couple of flatmates because we like to have people around the house.
Last bloke we had didn't exactly have his life sorted and moved in without actually having enough of an income to live there... was a bit of an annoyance to get it sorted. At least he wasn't being difficult - just unorganised. Still, I prefer to be the flatmate instead of the landlord and I really hate it when people force me into that role through their sheer incompetence.
It is preferential to refrain from the utilisation of grandiose verbiage in the circumstance that your intellectualisation can be expressed using comparatively simplistic lexicological entities. (...such as the word fuck.)
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. - Joseph Rotblat
"channellling the Pleideans"
Holy shit. that is amazing! blinged you up.
Question: given that saga, how far does $10k go to buying you a place? then when you move out, you get to beat the snot out of unwitting tenants, aND make friends with someone in the renovation biz.
Mortgage money is lent at 1% p.a. over there or something innit?
Just curious: a client of mine emailed me to say he had bought an apartment in Kyoto, inviting me to use it. Might be easy for him though, his wife is Japanese.
I want to go to Japan. would be fascinating.
I thought elections were decided by angry posts on social media. - F5 Dave
x
More like my blue heeler with a possum!
Fcuk that was a good read! Having been a landlord, and had similar problems myself, I can sympathise.
My story...
Had a rural property up north, had it on the market, but wanted some tenants, so place didn't get stripped.... Neighbour knew someone who was looking for a place - so met them, they seemed Ok... First two weeks in - then no rent, called them and managed to get another week out of them - then nowt more but stories... So off to TT, and got a date set for a hearing to get them chucked out.
Went up to show property to a prospective buyer (friend of a friend) after leaving a message on tenants cell phone er visit and TT. Got there, and arsehole tenant comes raging out - wild eyed, looking like he's SERIOUSLY messed up on summat, raging at me that he's gonna go to TT and have me fined!
I inform him that the TT's already booked - so he's welcome to. Well, THAT set him off. Prick comes at me with fist raised above head, looking like he's about to do murder - I just stood my ground, and said "I DON'T think that's a good idea" - he didn't 'strike' me, but knocked me to the ground (in front of witnesses), and made threats of - "I'm going to get you, smash you into the ground, and stand and piss into your mouth you #%$^*"... then storms off, leaps into his car and races off up to neighbours place - then comes back with another guy I'd never seen before (who sensibly just kept right out of it), and makes more rants and threats.
Meanwhile - I'd been on the phone to 111. What a waste of pharkin time! 15 minutes on the phone to them - and they still couldn't even work out where I was! (Council had changed road name several years before - 111 computers had one name on one system, and other name on other system...). In the end I gave up on them.
The two guys who'd come out to look at the place were well freaked out, and just wanted to leave - so back into my wagon (4x4 - with trailer on back), head up drive. Stop on RH side of road to close gate behind them - see arsehole tenant speeding up drive in his car, so think "Time to go - dunno what this fecker is gonna do..." - leap into wagon, and SHIT! Tenants car skids to halt at right angles to road, totally blocking my exit - and 'cos of trailer, I couldn't just back up and spin around and go the other way.
Guy starts climbing out of car, obviously in a rage, and hoping to 'get' me while the witnesses were driving up the road - looked like he had something in his hands so... 4x4 into gear, apply gas, aim at open car door. Smashed the door back against the front mudguard (I'd thought about slamming it shut onto his legs - but figured that was a bit too much), and hooked the front corner of 4x4 into front (hinge side) door pillar, and gassed it - pushed car across road, while looking through passenger window to make sure I didn't squash the prick toooo much (didn't want to pop his head - too much shit to clean off the side) - but not too little either.
Shoved car right across road, onto LH side, so road was clear, then backed back enough to clear car - and the dumb fuck jumped out in front of me. SCREAMING something, and standing in the middle of the road. I just looked at him, shifted into 1st, stood on the gas, so he was under NO misunderstanding that I was about to come his way, and dumped the clutch. 3 litre V6 had all 4 wheels spinning (metal road), and he LEAPED!Last time I saw him, he was standing on the side of the road shaking his fist at me.
Went straight from there to cops - lodged a complaint/report. Trouble was - the fecker lodged one back.... end result of that - even though (maybe because) he was known by the local cops, they couldn't just do him - but they decided to do a "You drop yours, and he'll drop his" deal - which I accepted.
And the TT? They were GREAT! Went in, told the story - and because he'd assaulted me (they called one of the witnesses), and hadn't made ANY attempt to pay any outstanding rent - they ordered immediate eviction (well, at the end of the week). They even asked me if I wanted him out on Friday! Being a soft touch (well, they had two little kids, and his missus was nice enough) - I said "by Monday."
Went up the next weekend, and the house was spotless! (his missus I reckon). But the bastard had poured weedkiller on the grapevine! Prick.
Then the next lot of problems started... bastards broke into the shipping container that had a bunch of our stuff stored in it, and stole a few things - new fishing rod that I'd not even caught a fish with, and the engine cases for my McIntosh!!
And stole the electric fence unit, and the water pump from under the house! And the useless insurance company (NZI - post State takeover) wouldn't pay out, as "the tenants were suspected". Even though they'd moved out...
Then after I'd got my tractor moved down to Whangarei - discovered he'd bloody well filled the diesel tank up with sugar!
After all this, we were totally pissed off with the idea of renting - but still wanted to sell the place (30 hectares + old Kauri villa) - put an ad in the paper this time, met a bunch of the applicants - picked a couple with a kiddie and did a reference check on them. Then signed them up for a 12 month no backing out contract, and took the place OFF the market (while we waited for the prison in Kaikohe to open - figured that would push property prices up). 12 months plus a bit later (tenants were really good - paid rent on time (apart from one small hiccup at the start - which can happen) and mowed the lawns and kept the place tidy.
The payback came - not from the ex tenant (we didn't bother trying to get money - just wanted to be rid of the whole thing) - but when we sold the place... Originally we'd had the place on the market for $150K, and got a best offer of $120K - then next time around (13-14 months later), put it on the market for $230K - and sold it for $210K!
So the tenant might have been an arsehole - but indirectly, he made us $90,000!
...and the engine cases were just that. Cases. Cut down ones. With stripped main bearing bolt holes. And nothing else in them. And the neighbours who were his pals, now have to put up with the new owner - who is a bit of a fruitloop by all accounts...
...man, I can't believe my bodies reaction to writing this... shaking and sweating... My mum passed away a year or so ago - and now have her place on the market - NO TENANTS! Never again. At least, not unless the rental property is real close to where I'm living...
UKMC #64
Fair weather rider
Depends what a 'place' is really... my inlaws' place, a 2 bedroom apartment in a building of 48, about 1 hour out of Tokyo was around $350,000. Closer to Tokyo = more expensive etc. probably more than $500k for the same thing where I live now, closer to Tokyo.
Hardcore Biker
Cheers Patrick,and others,for sharing.I was thinking of jumping on the bandwagon here in Pomgolia and doing the "buy to let" thing,instead went for my next best choice,investing in China,against all advice I might add,fund I'm invested in has made 107% in a year and I got in quick enough to make plenty,best bit is I didn't go into debt to make money.From what I've read here,rental property,no ****ing way Jose.
"channellling the Pleideans"
You only have made money when you sell out dont you? If it was me I would strip out the profits and leave the original investment in place: that way if it does go pear shaped its a zero cost thing.
I thought elections were decided by angry posts on social media. - F5 Dave
Tornado Alley
Hello - me again with this oldie....
Dropkicks have been paying $10 every week - have anrly paid two weeks rent oewed off the total...without problem... til this week.
Get a letter from the ACC saying that the amount paid is $3.33... No word from them about the change, no reasons, nothing.... Guess they felt that thier cigarettes, piss and drugs are ore important to them than paying their bills.....
Was going to take them a good 4 years to pay at $10 per week. Now it is being turned into 12 years??????
Got some calls to make tomorrow I guess.....
Bitch from Hell
make the call ... if you have to get a ruling from mediation and garnish their wages - e.g. it is not up to ACC what they pay.
Tornado Alley
True - but I am picking that they went to the courts and pleaded poverty and had the deduction reduced some how...
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