Signing the Mortgage Documents

Wednesday, August 30, 2023. We had a phone meeting with the bank’s lawyer (“scrivener” 司法書士 something like a lawyer specializing in real esatate) to review the documents we need to stamp (rather than sign) and send back to them. Based on the context, these documents seem to register the bank on the property deed as holding our loan. We had this meeting over the phone since the lawyer is in Tokyo, we were at the house working on tiling at the time.

There were four documents. All used our jitsuin, and some had to be stamped twice. Rough translation by me or DeepL:

• 登記意思確認立会調書　Registration Intention Confirming Witness Record. This document seemed to be that the lawyer was witnessing the signing, even though it was over the phone. Besides the date and time, the document also had a field for “weather”.
• 不動産抵当権設定契約証書　Real Estate Contract Deed or Real Estate Mortgagee Contract
• 抵当権設定　登記原因証明情報　Certificate for Reason to Register – Mortgage. Double stamped
• 委任状 Proxy Authorization. As before, we authorize the lawyer to perform these procedures for us. Double stamped

The bank’s fee for the loan was only 55,000 yen, but the fee for the lawyer is around 150,000 yen, which they didn’t tell us about in advance!