Broke into the Old Apartment

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Broke into the Old Apartment Monday January 28

As you know, the blog has been offline for awhile. We apologize for the inconvenience. Hereon begins the story, the excuse, or the events of the last two months.

Simon told me over six months ago that someday, he would propose to his then-girlfriend, and at that point, I'd probably need to move from my cozy 6-mat room to bigger and greener pastures. I had just moved in fall of 2006, so needless to say, I wasn't particularly exciting about having to repeat it. I had already discovered it to be time-consuming, fruitless, and aggravating process as a foreigner.

To make matters more complicated, Simon had spent a long time finding our apartment. The rent market in the area I was living is a sizable 10-15% higher than what we were paying, and there are a minimal number of layouts like the 3-bedroom plus combined living/dining layout we had. I was later told by a real estate agent that the "rate of return per square meter is higher when landlords divide up a unit into smaller studios". Thus, in an expense neighborhood such as mine (which I had never known it to be), 3-bedroom apartments are rare.

Thus, to begin the search meant looking at housing websites for months, finding nothing. An occasional phone call to a real estate agent either found (a) the place already gone, (b) the place did not rent to foreigners, and/or (c) they wanted 4-6 months' of rent up-front. And more than half of that never comes back to you in the form of a "deposit". Faced with the idea of paying so much rent up-front, I decided it was best if I get roommates to help cover the costs immediately.

December 2007. I am soon to go back to the States for a trip, and Simon has pretty much told me that he'd like to have his girlfriend move in by the time I get back. Slightly desperate, I posted an article on a "roomshare" group on Mixi, or Japanese MySpace, looking for suckers who'd want to live with me. To my surprise, I received a mail from a Korean guy who was, appropriately, looking for a place to live at the same time I was. He is 30, pretty straight-up, and seemed like the kind of guy that I could live with.

We met on a Saturday morning in mid-December, and we searched for apartments all day long. This is one of the most annoying tasks I can think of. As if seeing many, many places with some annoying real estate agent wasn't enough, I also had to consider the feelings of a person I barely knew in finding an appropriate place. Yet, somehow, by the end of that day, we had found The Perfect Place. 3-bedroom, cheap, in a beautiful, quiet area in one of the nicest areas of Tokyo. 10 minutes from Shinjuku, 15 minutes from Shibuya. Yeah.

So, I forked over a month of rent, signed all the paperwork (save the contract), and went back to the States for a holiday. During the break, I coordinated with the real estate agent as to when I could move in. That's when the trouble began to start.

I was scheduled to return to Japan on January 4th, and despite making a down payment on December 21st (the room was empty, mind you), the real estate agent was telling me I couldn't move in until at least the 7th. That would be 3 days of no-place-to-live. He made it very clear that around the New Year, it was hard to assemble the staffs necessary to clean and put the place in order (a seemingly-required process for moving in Tokyo, as all of the real estate agents have contracts with these vendors with built-in kick-backs. If you are wondering who pays for the cleaning, take a guess).

So, when I came back to Japan, sure enough, I was sleeping on the couch. I had told Simon I would move out, so I found my room no longer. All of my stuff was in boxes in the living room, and I was sleeping on a small fold-out bed in what was now "Sayaka's (Simon's fiance) office". The 7th became the 8th, and there it was -- the day before I was supposed to go pick up the keys and sign the final contracts.

The phone rings, which is never a positive sign. Seriously. Whenever the phone rings, something's going to happen.

It's the real estate agent.

"I just got a call from the landlord, he said that he wants to see me at the place; I am not sure what it is about but I am going now. When I find out, I'll give you a call; I am sure everything is fine," For those of you that don't work in sales, "I'm sure everything is fine" means "I have no idea what is happening right now but I am just praying that this sorts out cause I need that bonus, hey, pass me the joint".

The next morning, i.e., the day I am supposed to pick up the key, I called the real estate agent to ask what the meeting was about.

"Oh, I think everything's fine. There's just one thing that needs to be sorted out, and I am meeting the landlord today at 4pm to discuss. I'm also meeting the rental company at 1pm." (Yes, the rental company and the agent are different companies, which means you pay even more in commission and fees!) I asked if there was any problem with my situation. "Oh, no, it's not a problem for you at all; it is just something we need to sort out before you move in," he said. Fine enough. I went back to work.

To cut to the chase, I got another call at 6pm. I had intended to pick up the key after work. The van with all of my stuff was loaded.

Apparently, the landlord of this place owns 3 other apartments, and has refinanced each multiple times. He is about to go bankrupt. The debtors are going to repossess his properties in an effort to collect on their debts. This means that in a few months' time, he may not own the apartment any longer. As a non-owner, he can't very well rent it to me.

Now, the real estate agent works on commission, so he had been promising me the moon to keep me warm, as he needed to buy time to run around between the rental company and the landlord to see if there wasn't some way that he could make it work. For example, if I were to move in immediately, it may give the landlord the burst of capital he needed to pay off some creditors, for example.

Legally, if I did move in, I would have 6 months' to find a new place, should I be asked to move by a new owner. With all of my stuff in the van ready to go, and not having a place to live, I told the real estate agent "fine", but he told me that as an agent, they collect a fee, and he cannot very well collect a fee on a property that may be repossessed in 2-3 months. It's against their principles, he said. So, it's against principle to do something (rather, to allow something, as he had already done the work) to help me out in the short term, but it's fine to neglect your job, not check up on the landlord until the day I am supposed to move in? What a work ethic. That's a fine time to be taking the high moral ground.

I knew from the beginning this guy wasn't that smart. Lesson learned to go with your gut feeling. I should have kept looking. Lucky for him that he introduced me the perfect place (which, it was now clear why the rent was cheap: the owner was doing anything and everything to get someone inside).

So, there I was. No place to live, no prospects, and a full work schedule. That was January.