At the language school, Higashino Akira brought Kongming over and enrolled him.
He would study two languages: Japanese and modern simplified Chinese.
Looking at Kongming, dressed in a long robe with a feather fan and silk headscarf, sitting upright in the classroom among classmates who were mostly middle and high school age, Akira nodded in satisfaction.
Japanese had to be learned.
After all, they had practically gone deep behind enemy lines.
Not understanding the local language would not do.
At noon, Akira arrived at the place he had arranged with the real estate agent beforehand.
The agent had already been waiting for quite some time.
The agent was a man in his thirties, dressed in a proper suit.
His name was Sato Masahiko, and he had been waiting inside the agreed-upon café.
When he saw Akira, he warmly came forward and exchanged business cards with him.
After a few pleasantries, Sato went straight to the point.
“Higashino-sama, over the phone, you said you wanted to look at land or properties with relatively large plots.
May I ask your specific budget and area requirements?” “An initial budget of seventy million.
Installment payment is possible.
The larger the area, the better.” Akira accepted the coffee brought by the server, his tone calm.
“Seventy million…” Sato thought for a moment and asked, “Will there be a bank loan?” “No.” Sato smiled wryly and took out his tablet to pull up some information.
“Higashino-sama, you know Tokyo’s situation as well.
Every inch of land is worth a fortune.
Large idle plots with clear property rights are extremely rare.
Even when they exist, most are commercial development plots, and the prices are…” He slid his finger across the screen and showed several plots located in relatively remote areas.
The numbers listed behind them were indeed astronomical for the current Higashino Akira.
“If there’s no bank funding involved, then wanting to acquire a relatively large piece of land in Tokyo with only seventy million in cash is honestly a little difficult.” As for places outside Tokyo, that was not his company’s main business.
Sato naturally did not mention it.
He could not exactly push a big customer who had come to him out the door, and besides, recommending rural land might make it look like their company lacked strength.
“What about properties that come with land ownership?
Older ones are fine too.” “Yes, of course.
Every ward has quite a few resources in that area.
Please take a look.” Hearing that, Sato swiped across the tablet a few times and pulled up a large number of property listings for Akira to review.
Akira silently browsed through them and could not help frowning.
Still too expensive.
Whether it was land or properties with land ownership, none of the prices were cheap.
The main issue was his current situation.
Without enough assets or proof of stable income, it would be very difficult for him to get a bank loan to buy property.
With seventy million yen, it was not impossible to fully purchase residential properties in relatively underdeveloped areas, but the area would not be very large.
Many of them were not even half the size of the detached house left behind by the old man.
Looking at it this way, the old man had actually done pretty well for himself.
He had been able to fully buy a house with land ownership in Tokyo, and after his death, there had even been quite a bit of cash left in his bank account.
“Do you have anything cheaper?” “Uh…” Sato looked somewhat troubled.
“Higashino-sama, what I’ve shown you is already the most reasonable pricing for normal properties.
Even other companies would have difficulty offering better prices than these.
However, since you’re paying fully in cash, if you decide to buy, I can try to negotiate with the owners and bring the price down a little.
It should count as a small discount.” “Normal properties…” Akira suddenly raised an eyebrow and asked back, “So there are abnormal ones?” “Abnormal properties are basically either foreclosed homes with tangled ownership rights, properties where tenants can’t be evicted, or stigmatized properties where something happened.” Stigmatized properties!
The moment he heard that term, Akira’s eyes lit up sharply, and he immediately understood.
As part of the East Asian cultural sphere, Japan also had many taboos surrounding life and death.
Because of that, houses where people had died often had a smaller market and were much harder to sell.
Naturally, their prices were relatively lower too.
If he wanted to use limited money to maximize the amount of land and property he could buy, then stigmatized houses and cursed land were undoubtedly the best choices!
As for whether they felt unlucky?
That was money!
“Tell me more about the stigmatized properties.” Sato was clearly stunned.
The professional smile on his face faded a little as he carefully observed Akira’s expression, trying to judge whether he was joking or serious.
“Higashino-sama, you…
you’re not joking, are you?” “I’m super serious.” Akira leaned forward slightly, his eyes filled with yearning for Fukuzawa Yukichi.
This time, Sato’s expression became rather strained.
Lowering his voice with a toothache-like look on his face, he spoke sincerely, carrying a hint of warning.
“Higashino-sama, in our line of work, there are some houses we really can’t casually recommend to clients.
That isn’t a matter of price.
The fact that such houses are priced so low and still can’t sell already means there’s trouble.” “Not every property can become a truly stigmatized house.
Most houses that only had accidents happen in them will sell fairly quickly once the price is lowered to a certain point, and afterward, the new owners usually hold onto them long-term.” “But the properties that have been sitting in our real estate agency’s inventory for a long time without selling, or that sell and then quickly get transferred back again, usually mean that multiple owners in a row suffered misfortune after buying and moving in.
Those are the houses that are truly defined as stigmatized.” “There are some things that science still cannot clearly discover or reasonably explain.
But for those things, it’s better to believe they might exist than to insist they don’t.” “I understand.” Akira nodded, not backing down because of Sato’s words.
“Don’t worry, Sato-san.
My main purpose in buying property is investment.
I won’t necessarily live there.” Sato looked at Akira’s calm and unwavering gaze, hesitated for quite a while, and finally sighed.
Perhaps it was professional duty, or perhaps he simply did not want to give up on a potential customer.
“Since you insist, I do have information on several properties like that.
The prices are unbelievably low, but those houses…
I wouldn’t even recommend going inside.
It’s better to just look at the surroundings from outside.” “Thank you for the trouble.” Akira stood up.
Sato looked at the young customer in front of him, who somehow carried an inexplicably certain air about him, and finally nodded.
“All right.
Please follow me.
My car is parked outside.” The first property was located in a residential area outside the Tokyo metropolitan area.
It took about an hour to reach by car.
It was a fairly large two-story house, and including the yard, the total land area was nearly two hundred square meters.
And the price was only thirty million yen for a full cash purchase.
It could practically be described as a tearful clearance sale with the price slashed down to the ankles.
Akira only walked around the outside and saw that the building as a whole had been preserved quite well.
There was not much difference from the details given by the real estate agency, so he listened to the advice and did not insist on going inside to inspect it.
After all, he was not going to live here.
The commute was too time-consuming.
To him, the greatest value of this house was the land underneath it.
“Sato-san, this one, then.
Including the other two properties, the total is sixty million.
I’ll take them all.” “Higashino-sama, are you truly not going to reconsider?” “No need.” “Then please remember this carefully, Higashino-sama.
You absolutely must not move in.
If possible, it would be best to avoid even getting close to them.” Akira smiled and nodded in agreement.
At the same time, he asked Sato to help keep an eye out for other cheap stigmatized properties, since he would continue purchasing more once he gathered funds later.
All the way until the contracts were signed and the payment process completed, Sato could not help looking at this young man in the prime of his life with a hint of sympathy in his eyes.
[Negative energy intrusion detected.
Automatic defense triggered.
Fortune protection active.
Fortune -1000.] Higashino Akira: Wait, bro…
it’s a real haunted house!
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