A poster who said “I want a detached house” found both friends and real estate agents telling him “don’t do it” — and the post lit up discussion on the Nandemo Jikkyo G board. The thread ran through all the usual housing debates: why the older generation prefers detached houses, the crushing weight of condo repair reserve fees and management fees, and the age-old math of renting versus owning. Concrete numbers flew back and forth too, like how a 40-million-yen home on a 35-year loan at 3% interest ends up costing 64.67 million yen total. “If we’re talking gains and losses, you lose horrifically” clashed with “but rent comes with renewal fees too,” and the argument never really reached a conclusion.
Why is that?
Everyone else is thinking about resale value
The moment you buy a house, its value is already half or less
If anything, it's the older generation who starts hating detached houses once stairs and bad knees become an issue
Re: #1 is just talking without any real experience
Feels like a waste, no?
That's for the security, obviously
You'd get it if you ever visited one
When you just want to run out for some shopping, you quietly walk the hallway, wait for the elevator, ride down, wait to reach the basement
walk through the basement parking, finally reach your car, drive up the ramp, and finally get to the road…
Then after shopping it's the same thing in reverse — ramp, parking, elevator, hallway… every single time…
That's what I thought, though I didn't say it out loud
And on the high floors there are weight restrictions, so they use flimsy, paper-thin building materials everywhere
Just ignore rent hikes and nothing really changes
Guarding against the neighbor lottery and just ignoring rent hikes kind of contradict each other, don't they
If you're absurdly rich, renting is fine, but regular folks can't just up and move that easily
Now that my son's been born too, it might work out as an asset as well
Assuming your kids will just inherit it is a one-sided fantasy
unless you built it in a really prime location
With a house too, you'll end up paying several million yen eventually, whether you sell it or pass it down
Once 20 years have passed
roof and wall repairs get expensive
we're talking scaffolding alone running a million yen
The extended-warranty repair work homebuilders push every 10 years or so
doesn't stop at a million yen, you know
The exterior wall repainting I had done 5 years ago came to a bit over 4 million yen
and with the weak yen these days it's probably even pricier now
If you use insurance for storm damage, you can get it done for free
In Tokyo's 23 wards, 50,000-60,000 yen a month combined is totally normal
Paying extra for parking and bike storage on top of that is rough
and in the city, bike parking spots even get re-drawn by lottery every few years
It can't be demolished
There's no safe way to demolish a tower condo in the middle of a city
So it'll end up cursed gear like the tower condos in Echigo-Yuzawa (bubble-era resort condos now nearly worthless) — put up for sale at 100,000 yen and turning into a ghost building nobody wants to buy?
In the city center, even 40-year-old buildings don't get dumped for cheap, so tower condos in the 23 wards should be fine, no?
I really don't think that'll happen
as long as it's not somewhere like Machida or Hachioji
With a condo, there's a chance it won't sell and just becomes a liability
Isn't it 'owning vs. renting'
and separately 'detached house vs. condo'?
Go take a look at a 30-year-old house
There's no way you'd want to live in it as-is — you clearly haven't actually seen one
Re: #50
Well, what actually sells isn't the house itself but the land
The house is basically assumed to be torn down anyway
Watching those Open House commercials with Masato Sakai makes me think — building a house after your kid's already a high schooler (JK) is too late
It's only for like 5 or 10 years anyway
so renting a detached house would be fine
I do think it's late, but if you're planning around inheritance, taking out a loan at an age where 'if I die, the debt's wiped clean' (mortgage life insurance) is a viable enough strategy
You can sell it and turn it into cash
A detached house loses value the moment you move in, and after 20 years the building itself is worth zero
If you have no intention of leaving it as an inheritance,
and you hate it when noise comes through a single wall from next door, or you get complaints for walking too loudly,
and you can't stand hearing some other family's bratty kid screaming through the wall, then detached house is the only choice
Simple, right?
Being able to blast music loud in your room
is the appeal of a detached house
The air itself acts as a big wall
so unless you open the windows, sound barely leaks out
By the time it's inheritance time, the tower condo repair-cost problem will have blown up completely, so it won't be much of an asset anyway
Rent stays at just 100,000 yen, but a house never stops at just the 100,000 yen mortgage payment
If you buy a house stretching your budget to the limit, bonus payments included, you're in for a world of trouble
Rent comes with extra costs too, like the renewal fee every 2 years
A rental property's profit margin is around 5%
For a purchased property, ignoring interest, a 35-year loan runs at about 3%
The gap between 3% and 5% is a full 40%, so for the same monthly payment, a purchased property will get you a far higher-quality place
Buy a 40-million-yen house at 3% interest on a 35-year loan and you'll end up repaying 64.67 million yen — that's 24.67 million yen extra in interest alone
Just buy it outright in cash, then
For a detached house, that'll run you 90 million yen
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Behind the debate over whether a detached house or a condo is the better deal lies a difference in how buildings are treated under the tax code. Wooden houses have a legal useful life of 22 years, while reinforced-concrete buildings are set at 47 years, meaning the two structures naturally lose value at different rates. Condos require management fees and repair reserve fund contributions to maintain shared areas, and these typically rise as the building ages. The Echigo-Yuzawa resort condos mentioned in the thread are a well-known real-world example: units sold at sky-high prices during the bubble era ended up, decades later, nearly worthless due to unpaid management fees and a lack of buyers. Detached houses, meanwhile, rack up their own hefty repair costs for exterior walls and roofing, and in the end it’s usually the land — not the building — that actually sells. It’s easy to miss, if you skim too quickly, that the thread conflates two separate axes: ‘owning vs. renting’ and ‘detached house vs. condo.’ Opinions in the thread were also split on mortgage interest rates and total repayment estimates, underscoring that this is a debate with no one-size-fits-all answer.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Me: ‘I want a detached house.’ Friend: ‘Don’t get a detached house.’ Real estate agent: ‘Don’t get a detached house.’ The detached house itself: ‘Don’t get a detached house.’“
