Off market property in Tokyo is hard to come by, especially if you can’t speak Japanese and do not have the connections to access the information yourself.
To add to the issue, Japanese sellers of all property ranges sometimes are hesitant to allow their seller’s agent to publicly market their property.
This happens in large cities all over the world but in Tokyo, the secretive nature of listings is compounded by the Japanese culture of reservedness.
For many off market properties, the seller’s agent is only allowed to create a PDF and hand out that PDF based information to their clients / select buyer’s agents.
For this type of property, the largest fear of the seller’s agent isn’t that the property won’t sell; it is that the seller might see their property advertised somewhere or hear from someone they know about their sale.
For us the issue is even more compounded in the sense that our clients are foreign people who live in and out of Japan. The limited, paper based diffusion of property information runs opposite to what we need to do to get the info out.
In response, we have developed some tools that will allow you to get around this and receive the latest property information, both on and off market.
One is our weekly alert which, if you are reading this article then no doubt have clicked over from. But did you know we have another type of alert that is issued daily to meet your criteria, should anything be uploaded into our system to fits what you are looking for?
This is a property alert notification system that has no restriction on the property information displayed. The link attached to the property alert has a validity term of 72 hours, thereafter which the link goes dead.
This is to allow us to send unfiltered information out in a digital format while allowing us to protect the seller’s agent desire to keep the information limited in publication.
You may have noticed on our site that a lot of for sale listings have limited information and photos. This is borne from the seller’s agent desire to limit publication and if we are going to have a standing listing published then we need to restrict the detail we allow to be seen.
Property alerts get around this problem due to the limited validity of the URL provided.
Also, it is possible to have multiple alerts to match different criteria you have. You might be at the same time looking to purchase your own home at the same time as looking for investment property.
The solution is simple. Just set up two different property alerts with the corresponding criteria. Each time you receive an alert, the subject line of the notification email outlines the criteria to which the alert has been sent.
The solution is simple. Just set up two different property alerts with the corresponding criteria. Each time you receive an alert, the subject line of the notification email outlines the criteria to which the alert has been sent.
Property alerts are the best way to stay on top of the best listings for sale, both on and off market. Sign up today to get your’s set up.
Editor’s Note: Shirley is Sales Director for Housing Japan. She has sold billions of yen of real estate and arguably has the highest client satisfaction rating in the industry. Shirley writes a weekly column for Housing Japan readers to help illustrate common challenges buyers and sellers have when trading Tokyo residential property.
