Nice to meet you, I’m Mage!
As the title suggests, I’m going to write about why I started real estate investment and why I am selling my property now.
How I became interested in real estate investment
“Life is limited. I want to maximize the time I spend with the people who matter most, like family and friends.”
This was the reason I started real estate investment.
I am currently a 31-year-old office worker.
Thankfully, my annual income has been steadily increasing, and I’ve been building my assets smoothly since I started a Tsumitate NISA at 22.
However, the company I joined as a new graduate was extremely demanding.
I spent my days working hard, like creating presentations until 4:00 AM and presenting them to executives at 9:00 AM.
The work was so tough that during a trip to Okinawa on my precious days off, I even fantasized about just staying there to work and live, escaping reality lol
Although I felt I had grown significantly during this period, I realized I couldn’t keep up the pace physically, so I changed jobs in my fourth year of working.
After changing jobs, the workload decreased, but I witnessed the reality where my boss worked until 3:00 AM and work was heavily concentrated on middle management.
“There’s no benefit to getting promoted… Am I going to keep working like this until retirement…?”
Amidst such doubts and anxieties, I encountered a book and learned a surprising fact that changed my values in life.
・The second most common regret people have on their deathbed is “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” ・
The most important job in life is ‘making memories’. You can’t take money with you after you die, so it’s important to convert it into experiences while you’re alive.
“That’s exactly me! I don’t want to end my life working, and I want to create more memories with my family and friends.”
Triggered by that thought, I started thinking about how to earn stable income without depending on a company.
And finally, I arrived at “real estate,” which provides stable rental income.“Real Estate”.
Getting hooked on real estate investment
That said, when I heard about real estate investment back then, it felt vaguely scary, like “If I fail, my life is over.”
However, thinking I should start by gathering information, I read through 23 books related to real estate investment.
As a result, I realized that real estate investment is “not an investment to earn explosively in a short period, but a business that generates profit by controlling costs to earn rental income.”
And I understood that if you do proper numerical simulations, the risk of a major failure is small.
Above all, because I like and am good at doing numerical simulations in Excel from my professional experience, I became obsessed with calculating how to make a profit in real estate.
Finally, I set a goal to “increase rental income to 15 million yen by age 45” and actually went out to look for properties.
I bought a single condo unit as my first property
Nine months after I decided to start real estate investment, I purchased a condo unit in Tokyo as my first property.
Those knowledgeable about real estate investment will likely think, why not an entire building? And that I was finished the moment I bought a single condo unit.
As the person involved, I think so too, haha.
They say if you want to aim for rental income, you should do an entire building.
However, there were several reasons why I couldn’t take on an entire building.
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I didn’t have enough personal funds
(I was told that to take on an entire building, including down payments and other costs, 20 million yen would be necessary. My assets at the time didn’t reach that amount.) -
An entire building is where your life ends if you fail, and my anxiety won out
Therefore, I decided to switch my mindset to the phase of increasing my funds for now.
At the same time, I also had a desire to actually purchase real estate and experience the actual flow and practical tasks like finding tenants.
So, I found a condo unit where the numerical simulation showed that even in a worst-case scenario, the balance would be break-even, and I took the plunge and bought it.
That is how I made my debut in real estate investment.
What is the current balance and why am I selling now?
To conclude, for the period from purchase until September 2026, the balance is, as in the title, a 950,000 yen loss.
I plan to write in detail about why it is in the red in the future, but I realized firsthand that a condo unit is not something that makes money with monthly rent.
No money remains in hand.
If there is a profit, it is when you sell it.
And now, about two years after purchasing, I am conducting sales activities.
If you are knowledgeable about real estate investment, you may have already noticed, but selling two years after purchase falls under short-term transfer, and you get hit with a massive amount of tax.
So why am I selling now? There are two main reasons.
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Because there is a high possibility of making a large profit
I am currently requesting appraisals from 11 companies. When I lined up the amounts presented by multiple companies, it exceeded the remaining debt, and I saw the prospect of a profit remaining even after paying the high taxes for short-term transfer. I cannot write the specific amount now because I am in the middle of sales negotiations. Once the settlement is finished, I will disclose everything, including the appraisal amounts from all 11 companies and the final amount remaining in hand. -
Because the future outlook is uncertain in a world with interest rates
As of September 22, 2026, when I am writing this article, the Bank of Japan decided at its meeting on September 18 to raise the short-term interest rate target from 1.0% to 1.25% (effective from September 24). If interest rates rise, the interest I pay will increase, and the loan burden on buyers will also become heavier. Since this acts in the direction of lowering property prices, I thought I wanted to exit before they rise completely.
There were unexpected things like interest rates rising, but the fact that there is a possibility of making a profit on the property I purchased this time was actually as predicted by the simulation.
Therefore, this one property is likely to become a success story that real estate investment can increase the probability of making a profit if you perform numerical simulations properly.
I plan to disclose the actual sales activities and the final results of the sale on this note as well.
What I want to achieve with note
How was it?
In this note, I will share knowledge that you should know before purchasing a condo investment, as well as my experiences of success and failure in real estate investment.
“I want to increase the number of people who can make decisions based on numbers when buying and selling condo investments.”
That is the motto I want to continue sharing on this note.
See you in the next article!
Thank you for reading until the end!
