世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent survey from iShare took a look at paying back lump sums on home loans, and found out, as usual, some interesting opinions.

Demographics

Between the 27th and 29th of July 2010 1,487 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All the respondents had a home loan in either their own or their spouse’s name. 73.8% of the sample were male, 2.9% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, and 67.0% in their forties.

Note than in Japan as far as I am aware the only form of home loan is a repayment mortgage. Despite endowment-type life insurance and hospital fee policies being popular, as far as I am aware there are no endowment loans, nor pension loans or other interesting but more risky methods. I did however see a loan advertised on the back of a newspaper in the train saying something like paying an extra 10% up front then absolutely zero interest for the 15 year duration of the loan!

You can see immediately from the demographics that few people in their twenties appear to have home loans, a surprising figure to me. In Q5, the reluctance to have loans is also a surprise; in the UK a mortgage is a fact of life, and car loans are also rather common. I’d like to see a survey delving further into the Japanese way of looking at lending.

My home loan is for a scary length with a scary amount of cash to pay back – I had hoped that What Japan Thinks and the rest of my empire would help out accelerate the repayment schedule, but sadly that hasn’t quite gone to plan…
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Over the first five days of April 2007 MyVoice surveyed its internet community regarding home loans.

Demographics

17,241 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a private internet-based survey. 54% were female, 19% in their twenties, 40% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties. Note that since one needs to be over 20 to get a loan, teenagers were excluded from this survey.

I have a loan, and I fall into the higher brackets in Q3 and Q4. Note that contrary to popular belief, it is not impossible for non-permanent residents to get a home loan, although naturally, any credit scoring that takes place will be rather harsh on those without demonstratable commitment to Japan. I got mine whilst in the process of applying for permanent residency, although they did not ask for any proof that this was actually the case. I am also a full employee (正社員, seishain) of a major company, so that no doubt helped me get a scary multiple of my salary as a loan, one which I am due to be paying off until I am 75…
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Read more on: finance,home,mortgage,myvoice