I heard recently that State’s Overseas Building Operations office owns an apartment building in Tokyo. Why? Is it really just an apartment building with regular tenants?
One possibility is that since rents are so high in Tokyo, the State Dept decided to purchase a building to house the rank-and-file employees at the American Embassy in Tokyo.
I was thinking it was something like that. Diplomats, government officials, perhaps even higher ranking military personnel? I doubt it has Regular-Joe tenants, except maybe a superintendent or something like that.
Knew a guy who worked in Tokyo for 2 years. He lived in a place that was designed for Americans to rent. He did not pay the cost so it did not matter to him.
Here’s a bunch they are selling around the world:
It seems like it might well be a economical solution.
I worked for a company that kept an apartment in Vienna for staff that rotated in and out, apparently it was much cheaper than hotels. I stayed in it, but I never saw the bill. It was also nice not to HAVE to go to restaurant for every meal.
Our boss was really good with money. He looked at how much we were paying our travel agency, and decided to open his own travel agency with those funds. Not only did it save money, but it actually ended up making money as a sideline. Note that this was pre-internet, so you couldn’t book flights, hotels, rental cars, etc. on line without SABRE access.
Northwest Airlines used to own an apartment building in Tokyo, which they used to accommodate their air crews. It was sort of run like a hotel, except that some of the senior people, who flew into Tokyo on a regular basis, had their ‘own room’ which was not normally assigned to other people. There were also Northwest employees stationed in Tokyo who lived in this building.
It was a good sized building, with some garden space around it. However, at one point a few years ago, extremely high prices for Tokyo real estate coincided with one of the chronic financial crisises of NWA, and they sold the property. (Otherwise the financial results for that year would have been bad, and executive bonuses would have been threatened.)
I lived in Tokyo as a kid, the son of a diplomat. We lived in an apartment that was one of three in a row, all populated by embassy workers. There were other buildings where the Marine Corp embassy guards lived. It was all part of a compound including grassy areas for kids to play, etc. It wasn’t fenced or guarded. It was in Roppongi.
OBO (formerly FBO, or Foreign Buildings Office) owns huge amounts of real estate, including not only embassy buildings, but also residences. They also own huge stocks of large appliances for diplomats stationed overseas. There are also large fleets of government-owned vehicles. One example of a DOS-owned residence building is (or was) called FBO Zamalek, in Cairo. I lived in it for a time. It’s a walled compound with apartments that have steel roll-down shutters for protection. Leased housing is far more common, however, and accommodations overseas can run from small apartments to very large houses.
My life is my cite. I worked for the DOS in varying capacities for 12 years.