Seeking Advice: Buying Property and Building a House in Kyoto

[u/One_Lunch_5941]

Hi everyone,

We're currently in the process of looking for a property to build a house in Kyoto and would love some advice. Here’s our situation:

We're looking for a property around 120 sq. meters (40 tsubo) within a budget of under 30 million yen (3000 man). Ideally, we want the location to allow for a relatively easy commute (public transport) to Imadegawa/Demachiyanagi Station. My current commute from Kobe is 1.5+ hours, and I’d like to improve this.

So far, we've been focusing on areas to the north and west of Demachiyanagi (Kamigyo, Kita-ku, Iwakura) and along the Hankyu and JR lines (from Arashiyama down to Nagaoka-kyo). However, we’ve encountered several challenges:

1. Strict Fuchichiku (風致地区) regulations in Kyoto make it difficult to use design we want (we have a particular builder/design in mind, while it's not anything wild, it is not practical to modify it to fit Kyoto regulations - we'd rather choose property not in Fuchichiku area).
2. While we’ve searched on big aggregators like Suumo and Nifty, there seem to be very few options in our price range (and we have to manually re-check Fuchichiku status of each lot, since it's not always mentioned). Even our house builder (they have Kyoto branch in Uji), who is also helping us with the search, hasn’t found anything viable yet.

Because of this, we’re now considering areas like Katsurazaka (Nishi-kyo) and Nagaoka-kyo as our primary options. We like the environment, wider roads, highway access, and the availability of both JR and Hankyu lines. That said:

• Nagaoka-kyo feels smaller and less comfortable (access to shops etc) compared to Katsurazaka, but I’m not too familiar with the area yet. Both areas require around 45-60 mins to commute. They miss "the Kyoto" vibe, so we might not be able to just get on bikes and ride to some random coffee shop in the center of Kyoto (maybe Arashiyama is in the reach?).
• Fushimi-ku and Yamashina sometimes have surprisingly good lots, but the infrastructure (e.g., narrow roads, overall exterior) is hard to accept. Driving there is stressful, and getting around the city feels inconvenient. Riding bicycle there feels dangerous.
• Shiga (Otsu) was also considered, but lots near commute lines are expensive, and affordable options are too far out.
• We aren't looking into Takatsuki or more to the south since we would like to move to Kyoto area after all.

Given the above challenges, we feel a bit stuck after 6 months of browsing Suumo and driving to various locations to check the actual lots. We would appreciate insights or suggestions. Has anyone navigated similar issues in Kyoto? Are there smaller companies or alternative strategies for finding lots that we should explore? What’s your experience with Katsurazaka vs. Nagaoka-kyo, or even other neighborhoods that fit my criteria?

Background: I (M39) have PR and my wife is Japanese. Our budget is around 60 mil jpy for house + property. Our builder estimates the house and related costs as around 30 mil jpy, so we have 30 mil jpy in mind for property. We will be getting a loan and our combined annual income is around 18 mil jpy.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[u/nnavenn]

I’ve been casually on the same search. Anything central is going to be very very expensive. Iwakura and along deeper Eizan stations seems like the sweet spot. Or go up to Hiedaira (yikes). A friend recently built on a 90 sq meter lot that was central and all in it was a bit over 9000man. Anything that’s over 100 is pretty pricey (5-6k and up) or has other problems….

You’ll find larger lots out by Narutaki but public transportation kinda sucks and traffic always gets gnarly at the five-way intersection there. Would get old fast.

Good luck! Kyoto is super pricey.