The reason is very simple, you earn dollars against which you can make relatively good plans to pay back your mortgage, if you got yourself a mortgage in Yens you would have to pay it back in yens. You might have a lower mortgage rate, but what if the yen goes back to 80 yen to the dollars, suddenly your mortgage is no longer $200,000 but $337,500 . If that is a risk you are willing to take you are welcome. You may want to call a Japanese bank in New York, they might accommodate you. By the way, treasuries in Japan are less than 2% but mortgage rates are much higher, how much higher, I know not.
Zeev
PS, the Rupiah is at about 12,500, well on our way to my target of 20,000. If you were an Indonesian with a Yen denominated low interest rate mortage, your debt would now be 4 times what it was just a year ago. |
