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The story
A thread where 5ch users traded “conditions to avoid” when hunting for a rental apartment took off. Propane gas hookups and loft-equipped units got slammed for driving up utility bills and being a hassle to use, while ground-floor units and places near parks or schools drew complaints over security and noise. On the other hand, some posters offered concrete tips, like how even wood-frame buildings can have decent soundproofing if they’re newly built, or how a glut of warning notices posted in the elevator can tip you off to sketchy neighbors. Others pushed back, arguing it’s too simplistic to judge a wood-frame building’s soundproofing by structure alone — opinions in the thread were split.
What people said
Park right next door
School nearby
Has a loft
Wood-frame construction
Propane gas
North-facing windows
Why's a loft a problem?
Any wiring type other than fiber-optic
Why's propane gas a problem?
Those two alone will make your utility bills skyrocket
Huh, makes sense
Also if the rent's above the area average, the quality of tenants goes up too, so less noise
Wood-frame is within my personal tolerance
If it's a family-oriented complex the kids will be a riot though
They're running around upstairs 24/7
They're squealing away every evening, ugh 😭
Propane gas
Any wiring type other than fiber-optic
Ground floor is a restaurant
These are the ones I absolutely avoid
They're stomping around morning and night, the common areas get used as storage, and if there's a parking lot your car gets scratched up
Gas costs way more than city gas
I'm currently paying 55,000 yen but got forced out because they're tearing the building down, and now I can't even find the same conditions for 70,000
Depends on the property, but it's fine
if the windows face the street
and if it gets cold in winter, floor condensation can get brutal
I get the cold-in-winter part, but condensation too…?
Though it's nice that summers stay cool enough to sleep without AC for a long stretch
Your balcony's totally exposed, bugs get in, and it's noisy
Bugs aside, whether the balcony's exposed depends on the location I guess
Isn't that more about how the building's positioned on the lot?
I lived somewhere with 2 months' key money and every single neighbor around me was still trash, plus the management company's response was garbage too
Judging soundproofing by structure type alone is kind of dumb
This
Just pick a sturdy, heavy building and soundproofing is basically locked in
That's not the whole story
Inside the walls and ceiling there are hollow spaces for wiring that connect to vent fans and vent openings
There are gaps
and if that construction is bad, no matter how perfect the wall itself is,
sound leaks through there
Also through the gaps in the balcony sliding door frame
Heating doesn't reach it
Using it to sleep means dealing with annoying stairs
Ends up as basically just a storage spot
Real estate listings show the loft and ground floor combined as one square footage, so the actual ground-floor space is smaller than it looks
Wait, they combine the square footage…? That's basically a scam 😡
A coin laundry or something?
A convenience store, if I had to pick, but honestly a property with no tenant at all is better
Background and key points of this discussion
Loft units drew particular criticism in the thread because real estate listings sometimes display floor area as the combined total of the ground floor and the loft, meaning the actual livable ground-floor space is smaller than the listed number suggests. Propane gas is supplied under a free-pricing system that varies by provider, unlike city gas, which is regulated as a public utility — making it worth checking the billing setup before signing a lease. As for the soundproofing of wood-frame buildings, the thread split between those arguing that wall thickness and weight matter more than structure type and those arguing wood-frame is structurally disadvantaged either way — no clear consensus emerged. How soundproof a given unit actually is depends heavily on factors like its age and construction quality, which aren’t something you can judge from a floor plan alone.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Conditions you should absolutely avoid in a rental wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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