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

“We have lived in Tokyo for over 10 years and Housing Japan has helped us find two amazing houses in great locations. After our first experience with Housing Japan, there was no doubt that we would seek their assistance when we were ready to move to a larger home. Our agent Horiki is very professional

“I came to Tokyo about 2yrs ago and was greatly surprised how poor the housing selection was. After looking for several days at many different places using a different housing service company I finally settled on a nice apartment but the location and size was far from my expectations. I was only supposed to be in Japan for 2 years so I figured I could survive there. Then recently my company extended my stay for an additional 3 years and I knew I had to find a place to live that I liked and not just tolerated.

I decided to use a different service (Housing Japan) since my luck with the other company was not so good. Amazingly, I found a house I loved during the first day of my search due to great preparation from my agent Matsumoto-san

I have been working with Hashimoto-san at Housing Japan for YEARS.  He originally came recommended by a couple of different friends, and he helped me find my last 3 rental apartments.