[Chelly] Mansion de écrasée Vol. 7 The Tale of Unit 3: cost-effective full house renovation

Zi Ye
2024年8月4日
讀畢需時 3 分鐘

To my great surprise, Unit 3 attracted renters first. First, let's refresh our memory of Unit 3, aka, the back unit.

Unit 3 is the largest of the three. It is darker during the day since it is sandwiched between the two front units and the neighbor's properties in the back.

In general, Unit 3 is in a slightly better condition than Unit 2. Although it looks like most wall paper is warped and needs to be replaced, the floor in the kitchen and the dining room looks like they were just replaced a few years ago. The bathtub is on the narrow side but functional.

But it has a significant defect as a rental: it only has a Japanese-style toilet. I'm Chinese. My generation is still capable of the important kung fu called "Asian squat" since most of us more or less used old-style public toilets. But even people of my generation wouldn't want a squat toilet at home. Not to mention younger ones. Given that Japan produces the best washlet toilet in the world, Japanese people under age 40 would probably be discouraged if they see a Japanese-style toilet in a rental, no matter how great the rent is.

Replacing a Japanese-style toilet, a washiki toilet, with a "Western-style" toilet, a yoshiki toilet, is by all means EXPENSIVE. There are certain ways to go around it. For example, one can use a "Western-style cover" to convert squatting to sitting.

This product is popular among older Japanese folks who don't have enough budget for a full bathroom renovation but are finding it more and more difficult to squat due to aging. But the defaults of these "Western-style covers" are obvious, too–it would be more work to keep it clean since there won't be water flushing the inside of the cover every time you use it. Yup, dropping things from high altitude...you know the drill.

So, how much is the cost of a full toilet renovation?

Toilet replacement: 300,000 to 500,000 JPY (new toilet included) ≈ 2000 to 3500 USD

Wall paper replacement: 30,000 to 50,000 JPY ≈ 200 to 300 USD

Flooring replacement: 30,000 to 60,000 JPY ≈ 200 to 400 USD

Even if one buys a new toilet or a barely used toilet at a discount, the labor cost for taking down the old toilet, reconnecting the pipes, and replacing the flooring will cost around 150,000 to 200,000 JPY, which will make the total cost of modernizing a bathroom around 200.000 JPY for the least.

Nonetheless, refurbishing the restroom would permanently increase the rental value of this unit. In other words, sooner or later, we might have to pay for the full renovation.

Another factor that affects our decision-making is that although Unit 2 has a Western-style toilet, it needs many small replacements, including probably a full replacement of kitchen cabinet doors and tatami mats in some of the rooms.

Ultimately, we asked potential renters to see both places and let them decide which unit they were more interested in living in.

By the way, the potential renters are a gentleman in his 50s and his 80+-year-old father. The rent they offer to pay is 35,000 yen/mo. The son can still work, and the dad has some pension money coming. Even so, looks like they have a very limited budget for rent. The biggest obstacle for them to find a rental is that they have a pet cat, which greatly narrows their options. It's not surprising that landlords don't like renters with pets. For the same amount of rent for a 3~4-bedroom unit in Mansion de écrasée, they would probably only get a tiny 1-bedroom unit in an apartment in the same area. No wonder they would be interested.

In the end, the renters chose Unit 3. The son and the father will each have their own bedroom, and their cat can roam the house. After we got confirmation from the renters, we quickly contacted a trusted carpenter, who gave an estimate of 600,000 yen for a full renovation, including toilet replacement. The renovation started in mid-June and finished by the end of that month. The following is the bill we got: it topped 599,500 yen (≈US$4094).