SOLD by Housing Japan !
We recently helped Mr Mike Gault to sell his residence in Meguro-ku. In 2005 we helped him to buy the same residence and we also managed the property for him for five years while he was out of Japan. Mike has been a loyal customer of Housing Japan so we were very interested to hear his thoughts on real-estate in Tokyo and his experience using Housing Japan. Thank you Mike for the kind words !
PHOTO: Housing Japan's Yoshikawa and Mr Mike Gault
Mr Mike Gault, Co-Founder and CEO at GuardTime, ex-Managing Director at Barclays Capital. Currently living in Singapore.
In June 2005 I purchased my house in Meguro through Housing Japan with financing from Shinsei Bank. Housing Japan did a great job helping me with the property search and negotiated a good price for me at the time. The purchase process was somewhat time consuming but relatively straight forward and Housing Japan took care of all the details.
Shortly after I made the purchase I had to leave Japan so unfortunately I never really got to live in the house. As I left I asked Housing Japan to manage the property for me and they were able to find a great tenant, paying JPY 1,200,000 a month! This was actually quite a decent return especially since I had the house mortgaged at a very low rate from Shinsei Bank. The monthly rent easily covered the interest and mortgage repayments and even left me with some excess cash-flow each month.
In 2011 I decided to sell the property and again I used Housing Japan to help me with the sale. The process was smooth and I feel I got a good result given I was selling quite soon after the earthquake. The market is lower since 2005 so I sold at a price lower than my purchase price but overall I still came out ahead considering the income gains of 5 years and the huge currency appreciation of the JPY.
Overall I am happy with my investment in Japanese real-estate. It was a stable investment and I was able to sell when I needed to. I was also very happy with the service from Housing Japan, they were efficient and professional throughout.
Mike Gualt
