Alternative housing ideas

[Gideon911]

Originally Posted by 911heaven

Sounds like a great adventure! Ballsy move as well for sure! Just got my guest house on it's stilts today so I'll send you some pics. I bought this place 9 or 10 years ago for 1 million yen, which is 7.5 K USD at current exchange. It has the 180 year old kominka house which I'm jacking up by myself as a hobby and weekend bach. The guest house I've built out of virtually free material. It will sleep 3 people, me, wife and daughter til we get the house finished off. Until now we've stayed in a tent inside the house, but it's in the way on rennovation so I built this guest house! Someday we can have guests stay there or do the Airbnb maybe.

The land is 262 tsubo (x 3.3 sq meters per tsubo). I saw some pop up today NHK news about Tamba Sasayama city, a village called Maruyama. We are in that city but out in the mountains. Property tax I pay anually is 5,800 yen on this property. Beautiful view, lots of wildlife and boy do the city folk love to come out here from Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka!









That black snake in the grass just protects the property from intruders which aren't many.

Fun project! Being from southern CA I love seeing all that greenery

[Gideon911]

Originally Posted by Matt Monson

Outside of CA gas prices are a different thing. My uncle just posted bragging that he found $4.71 in Sacramento. I haven’t seen it over $4 for over a week. Don’t do your math on cost to travel on CA gas.

That's a really good point

[mepstein]

Originally Posted by Gideon911

We sold our house and put everything in storage. The plan was to get an RV and travel. Gas prices have been so high, along with prices of RVs/trailers. Looking at boats but they are pretty foreign to me. We stayed with friends for a couple weeks until we moved into a furnished airbnb at the beach. I'm paying my best friend a couple hundred a month to let me keep a big tool box, my 911, and my safe in his second garage. Looking for an RV or trailer again to see if I can score a deal. If we buy one we will still travel, but we won't bounce around as often with the higher gas prices. Looking at homes in different areas. I'm not going to look seriously for about a year. Hopefully the prices come down and we can find something we can stay in for several years. I've wanted a house that had a guest house on it for years. We'll see but I'm going to try for that.

Boats and RV's will be cheap soon. As interest rates and inflation rises, boats are the first to go, especially if they have dock and storage fees. High gas prices, storage fees and a couple repairs to the RV will sour a lot of people on them soon. Look at 2008. People were walking away from boats, airplanes and vacation homes. I don't believe it will be anywhere close to 2008 but the extras that pull money away are the first to get dumped. When they have to compete against all the new boats and rv's that go on sale with special financing, resale will take a big hit.

[Gideon911]

Originally Posted by mepstein

Boats and RV's will be cheap soon. As interest rates and inflation rises, boats are the first to go, especially if they have dock and storage fees. High gas prices, storage fees and a couple repairs to the RV will sour a lot of people on them soon. Look at 2008. People were walking away from boats, airplanes and vacation homes. I don't believe it will be anywhere close to 2008 but the extras that pull money away are the first to get dumped. When they have to compete against all the new boats and rv's that go on sale with special financing, resale will take a big hit.

I think you're right. I was thinking we'd already be seeing some of this. I'm waiting a bit since I haven't seen the deals I thought I would..at least not yet

[911heaven]

Originally Posted by Gideon911

Fun project! Being from southern CA I love seeing all that greenery

Just an extra idea my KIWI friend 1 km up the road does that I forgot to mention. He has 800 tsubo (x 3.3 square meters) longer thinner property. On both ends he pulls water from the river out front, or the creek behind as well, and with sort of water sprinklers it does his roof like a lawn. The workshop the same way down the other end. In this heat it brings the temp down several degrees celsius on both buildings. Of course the water is free (village water rights) and the electricity is free via solar and huge storage in EV (leaf) batteries that he's configured. If you want some pics I can take some with his permission. In essence, there isn't a penny being spent there. Normal is Japanese have solar panels some on their roof. By law, any of those systems have a shunta inverter, meaning they give you a discount on the energy you produce, still charge you and then steal all the rest which goes out into the grid. My friend keeps and stores all of what he alone produces, so he can sprinkle his rooves, charge his car or whatever. It's all free...