That Summer, We Were Building a House [Day 12 of the Relay Note]

“Does that mean it won’t have a seismic performance rating?”

During our meeting at the design office, my husband’s expression was grim.

Two years ago, in the summer of 2022.
We were building a house.

The house we were building

The type of property we decided to purchase was a “pre-sold house” (uritate jutaku).

It is a “hybrid” between a “custom-built house,” where you buy the land and give detailed orders to a builder, and a “ready-built house,” which is sold after construction is already complete.“hybrid”—that is what a “pre-sold house” is.

They sell it while it is still just land, and build the house afterward.

At the design office, we were discussing the house to be built on the land we had decided to purchase.

The process is the same as a custom-built house, but the basic floor plan is already set, and major changes like“wanting to build a basement”arenot possible.

In our case,at the time of the contract,the building price was also a specific figure of “X million yen.”

We were told that if we went with the “standard specification” plan, it would come to this quoted amount.

Naturally, if we chose options that were“outside the standard specifications,”there would beadditional costs.

At the time, our budget was such that we could “just barely manage” with the quoted amount, so it was an“implicit understanding”between us as a couple to“stick to the standard specifications as much as possible.”

Even so, we were able to choose things like the flooring, wallpaper, and thecolor of the exterior walls,and the meetings with the architect throughout the summer were basically a very enjoyable time.

But.

A house that does not “have” a seismic performance rating

I believe it was around the middle of our meetings.

The architect explained the “seismic performance rating” in a casual manner. *

My husband thought for a moment, then said this:

“Does that mean it won’t have a seismic performance rating?”

"That's correct," said the architect.

"Please let me think about it for a moment."

--A house in this day and age with "no" seismic performance rating?

We had assumed that a seismic performance rating was something that was at least automatically assigned.

After looking into it carefully, it seems that obtaining a seismic performance rating is optional and not a legal issue.

Even so, it weighed on our minds.

And so, after discussing it as a couple, we decided to get the seismic performance rating certification.

It cost just under a million yen.

Since we were talking in terms of tens of millions of yen, our sense of scale had become distorted, but it added an unexpected surcharge to the cost of the building.

I wouldn't go so far as to say we lost money...

But, I wish we had known before deciding on the contract.

I'm not arguing that seismic performance certification is necessary.

It's just that we were surprised to be confronted with the fact that our common sense and the common sense of home building are different.

The difficulty of buying a house

"To be recognized as having a certain seismic performance rating, you need to undergo an inspection, which costs money."

This might be common knowledge to people in the industry.

But for us, "we had no idea at all".

None at all, really.

That is precisely why, as someone who has bought a house, I want to say this.

／
Before you go to buy a house, you should research it very thoroughly！
＼

We live in an era where you can get a lot of information if you want to.

It might be impossible to research everything, but try not to leave it to others as much as possible.

And, listen to stories from people in various positions!

(Oh, look, there's a financial planner right here!)

I think this is what is important.

Summary

This time, based on my experience from the summer two years ago when we were building a house, I conveyed that when buying a house, you should research it yourself as much as possible! message.

It was fun, though, building a house. I remember being surprised by how many things I didn't know.

I hope our experience will be useful for someone's home purchase.

※Reference site

This article is participating in Zukki-san's project, "Midsummer Relay Note"!

Zukki-san, who involves many people with overwhelming writing ability and sales skills.

Attracted by the expressions that make you grin, before I knew it, I had finished reading the article in no time!

There are many such wonderful articles.

By the way, here is the paid article that changed my note life ↓

This article received the baton from yesterday's runner, Ken Tateyama!

Please take a look at Tateyama-san's note, which depicts the scene of a festival like a painting ^^

And the next baton goes to Aozora Chikuwa-san!
Just look at this article!

Knocked out by the title.
I am honored to run ahead of such a person!

Please take care of it!

#MidsummerRelayNote