About the house plan
What layout does your new home have, how many rooms does it have, and what kind of rooms are there?
How did you determine the height of the ceilings in the house?
How many windows are there in the house and what were they like?
What was the hardest part about planning your home?
Are there any special features in the layout of the house? (storage room in the hallway and space under the stairs)
What colors did you use to decorate your home?
Is there anything else you'd like to add to your home's layout?
What do you think is the most important thing in planning a private house?
What is the size and layout of your home? Are there any features or unusual solutions that you would like to highlight?
About building a house
How long did it take to build your new home?
In fact, exactly a year passed from the decision that we were ready to build the Hinokiya house until we moved in. The construction itself, from the moment when all the details for the house design were approved, the land was purchased and the loan was issued, and until the move-in took about 7 months.
What was the value of your home?
The base cost of the house itself was about 21,000,000 yen including tax, i.e. about 57 mana yen per tsubo. Additional costs for improving the land, bringing water, sewerage and gas to the site, installing 3.6 kW solar panels and various improvements around the house came out to about 5,500,000 yen. All this at 2022 prices.
Are you within your budget?
We did not meet the initial budget; we planned to spend less money. But as they say, “appetite comes with eating.” Yes, as I said earlier, we are building a house for ourselves for a long time and we want it to be comfortable. My wife wanted to improve a number of items in the kitchen, I decided that now it would be profitable to install 3.6 kW solar panels (an additional cost of 100 mana), we changed the NICHIHA cladding slabs to KONOSHIMA (I liked them better), and added small options to the bathtub and hallway for heating water carried out city gas. In general, the overexpenditure of the planned budget amounted to about 300 man yen.
What challenges did you face when purchasing and building your new home and how did you overcome them?
The main problem for most foreigners in Japan when building a house is obtaining a loan. We did not receive the loan to build the house in full; we had to invest our savings. Approximately 20% of the cost of the house.
There were no problems with the construction itself - Hinokiya did a very competent job.
Is your house all denky?
According to Hinokiya's plan, the house was planned to be completely electric, but it turned out that we had the opportunity to install city gas to heat the water. An IH stove was installed in the kitchen. This option seemed to us the most cost-effective and comfortable.
