an Akiya (abandoned) building (former post office?) with a splendid postbox – taken from one of many sites i’ve dug around, sorry can’t remember which one… so many! if this is your photo, please tell me and i’ll add credit.

+ Cheap Houses Abound in Japan + 

memo: have resources to add/ recommend? please drop a comment or contact – of course there are loads, this will get ya started.

Background Riff

So many vacant houses in Japan – millions! The general term you’ll hear is “Akiya” houses (free/cheap abandoned houses). Sometimes the owner is unknown, sometimes there are mysteries, sometimes houses have businesses attached, sometimes from way back in Meiji or Edo period! Sometimes someone died in odd circumstances within, or sometimes just died.

Often very (very) messy, always requiring work, a lot sometimes. Materials, labor and disposal can be really expensive in Japan so good to remember (speaking generally for anyone else who is reading along, not just you :-)). But hey, you are crafty right? Keep in mind, its a whole other style of construction than “western” places. Tile roofs! Foundations, plumbing, electric all different and sometimes you’ll need boundary surveyed.

Importantly: Foreigners can buy houses/properties in Japan BUT just cause you own a house, doesn’t mean you get a visa. CheapHousesJapan Newsletter has a great overview (appropriately called: Can A Foreigner Buy Property In Japan? read this first).

Plus:

• immigration to Japan is *extremely* difficult, so the pithy “Millennials, you are going to Japan” headlines are very overstated to say the least
• these cheap/empty/trad places are usually quite remote and require a lot of work. “No big deal, right? I’m handy!” is first hunch but keep in mind, the cost of upgrading can be verrry high (gotta have cash since no mortgage or home improvement loans for you unless you are well established) and building skills are very different than “western” houses.
• in snowy areas (where many/most of these houses are, not beach front or modern/urban), keep in mind the houses are uninsulated and literally made of curvy logs, complicated joints, sticks, mud and paper
• also worth noting that internationals often look at Japan like we could fit the whole country in our “back pocket” without realizing most of the population lives in the megasaki-opolises between Tokyo > Nagoya > Osaka and 90% of the country is blissfully rural and mountainous (a lot of it quite like Cascadia really) and can require long drives on twisty roads to get to services

Handy Vocab:

• Akiya = abandoned/unused houses, see also,
• Akiya banks = directories managed by municipal govs seeking to find residents for akiya (often to prevent eyesores, demolition and/or  revitalize areas)
• Minka/Kominka = traditional houses of various styles and eras
• Machiya = traditional townhouses (usually narrow and deep)
• Administrative Scrivener (行政書士 or gyoseishoshi) = your ace to do the transaction
• Kura / Naya = various types of out-buildings on compounds/farms
• note to self: add more terms here

Situation, in brief

The big cities are growing and the countryside is shrinking, fast. Young folks move away to the big city to work, old folks stay in country, working til they grow old and in Japan, folks grow very old. When they die, often the heirs are unknown or simply refuse the “inheritance” or they try to think they will go back and fix it up and enjoy the legacy but year after year paying property tax, they finally realize they won’t ever fix it up. In other words, property/houses is generally/always a depreciating asset in Japan.

Anyway, the laws of changed significantly in recent years allowing local governments to expropriate more easily so there’s loads and loads of these houses available, does definitely take some hunting around though. Indeed! It’s definitely a scavenger hunt… so this dossier is a clearinghouse of resources, stories, articles, musings, directories, etc.

Worth Noting

Often inaka/country-area properties have a couple buildings, kura (granary / storehouse / barn), naya (garage / tool shed) various shacks and barns and sometimes an extra house. These can be used for materials to scavenge sometimes, or other times revitalized or other times are just another thing that needs torn down and gracefully disposed.

Also noting that some properties come with legacy hotel licenses which can be very valuable to make some kind of Guest House project. Note: short-term/ad-hoc rentals like Airbnb require licenses like other guesthouses.

Communities and Conversations

“Your mileage may vary” – please drop a comment with errors and omissions (will open in new tab/page)

Kominka Facebook group (private with application) and Kominka Japan website – a load of folks sharing their stories and tips about finding and reno-ing houses (also grew into host of Minka Summit Japan), a great place to start!

A Reddit AMA “I just bought a used house in rural Japan after a five year search. AMA about house/land hunting, abandoned homes, the real estate process, or the reform process (which starts soon!).”

smart snippet from AMA about searching: “Individual towns tend to keep track of their empty houses via their homepages. Search the town name in Japanese, plus “空き家バンク” and if they have something it will pop up. As far as I know, Akiya banks are locally managed.” + This person’s house/project

Japan Simple Life (forum)

A real estate company with some useful advice (in English): WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE BUYING A VACANT HOUSE IN JAPAN

Directories/Resources/Programs:

Koryoya Old Houses Japan IG and Koryoya.com (portal for Kominka and Machiya for sale

Lifull’s Home (another listing directory, pre-set for Okayama where i live)

Monsoon Planning (houses for sale and rent)

Akiya-Now (yet another directory)

House/land look-up Vill.co (choose by prefecture)

City of Okayama (where i live!) List of unoccupied houses + info about abandoned houses

Setouchi City (Okayama-ken) subsidies for moving there and they help you (you prob don’t qualify but whatevs)

Another Akiya listing “bank” – note Chugoku (the area with Okayama and surrounding prefectures, sometimes translates as China, it is not China, it is “Middle Area of Japan”) Carry on.

Akiya at home (yet another directory)

Public Real Estate portal  / directory

Ie Ichiba (directory, set for Okayama)

{More Okayama area thanks to Shelly and others at Foreign Homeowners Okayama FB grp}

OK Smile with houses, land for sale / rent, mostly in Okayama

Yakage, Okayama town vacant houses directory

Ibara, Okayama with handy inaka living Q&A and settlement programs

(tip: other areas like Soja and Kibi Chuo have websites too. Just search for 田舎/空き家 and the area you’re looking)

Akiya Kanrishi (association of owners of unoccupied homes…)

Inaka Seikatsu (yet another directory)

Inakanet (yet another directory)

Koryoya (Kansai-area specific directory)

Koryoya (Hokuriku-area specific directory)

Bousou.net (yet another directory) {translated blurb}:

“Full of real estate information such as Boso’s rural living properties, old folk houses and land! Updated daily on our site!
Enjoy rich content such as interviews with migrants and how to choose a property for living in the countryside.”

Ijurikkoku Ayabe (Japanese resource for living in rural areas, with practical cultural info and stories) hattip to <insert name here cause i can’t recall>

(Related to above) Ijurikkou Ayabe (directory mostly about Kyoto area currently for sale) they are really encouraging people to move to the area, ergo:

Japan is a country with an extremely poor urban and rural population balance. In particular, the degree of population concentration in the metropolitan area is unprecedented in the world. Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate is less than 40%, the lowest among developed countries, but the declining population in rural areas makes this even more serious. Leaving unbalanced population imbalances is a risk to the country. Japan was able to recover at an astonishing speed after World War II because of the power of the regions!

A migration-oriented country is a project that encourages migration and energizes Ayabe City. At the same time, it is in line with national policies that encourage migration from large cities to rural areas. That’s why it’s an immigrant country!

The population of Ayabe City will increase to 40,000 in the next 30 years!

The goal of the Migrant Nation Project is to “populate 40,000 in the next 30 years.” Even if Japan’s population declines, it should be possible to correct the population imbalance.

Grant program in Daisen Town (Japan’s *best* mountain :)) in Japan’s least famous prefecture (and my old home) Tottori

Through the Daisen-cho vacant house / vacant lot information utilization system, a young person who purchased the vacant house registered in the utilization system will remodel the vacant house, dispose of household goods, or dismantle the vacant house and then build a new house on the same site. By issuing a subsidy for the purchase of vacant homes for young people in Daisen Town within the budget, we will promote settlement in Honmachi, utilize vacant homes, and revitalize the local economy.

More Stellar Videos

Watch this first: Tokyo Llama and Alex Kerr (more on both below) riff about and explore topics and places in Last Glimpse of Japan’s Beautiful Old Houses? More about this video in post: Llama & Legend discuss Kominka & Akiya

JJ Walsh (a sustainability advocate in Hiroshima) series about Sustainability in Japan does frequent video streams with folks doing interesting lifestyles in Japan including home reno/creation. + these gems with builder Jon Stollenmeyer in Okayama (Jon’s company is Somakosha)

• OKAYAMA100-year-old Traditional Japanese House to Dream Home | Jon Stollenmeyer
• Sword tool demo + Carpenter shop tour with Jon at Somakosha in Okayama Japan
• and another DIY Dream House in Lotus Fields / Only an Hour from Tokyo | Laura Blackhall SSL234 ++ more more (including with me)
• another video with JJ Walsh, this time in interview discussing a remodel project Japan Historian’s Bargain MINKA Remodel + Restore House in Kanazawa | Jeremy Phillipps

Karl Bengs: Keeping Memories Alive “German architectural designer Karl Bengs has emerged as a leading voice in the effort to save Japan’s traditional homes and depopulated mountain villages from extinction. Nippon.com recently visited him at his home in the rural Taketokoro district of Niigata Prefecture.” via Nippon.com, Dec. 11, 2017

See also: European architect Karl Bengs and Assoc “Kominka Revival”

Even more stories

Kinda hesitate to share this as its sorta hypes the hypes its talking about not hyping but… more riffs for your “cheap house in Japan” file (remember: visas for foreigners aren’t easy but hey, where is? anyhow some pleasing reads about a notable demographic and geographic shift)

Rescuing the minka by Susan Essoyan, Dec. 20, 2007 LA Times

Japan is giving out free homes in 2022! Will you get one? via
Ronin Blue YT

(yet another) rather sensationalized article from “The Insider” – Yeah these articles are such click bait as don’t mention the challenges of visas, community fit, renovation costs, scarce labour, rubbish removal etc. just “free houses, near Tokyo, all you can eat sushi  ” but folks love em. anyhow: The Japanese government is looking for people to occupy some 8 million empty homes. Local authorities are giving away free houses and renovation subsidies to incentivize move-ins & also from Insider.com “Japan is trying to lure people into rural areas by selling $500 homes, but it’s not enough to fix the country’s ‘ghost town’ problem”

CNN (sponsored by Japan Government apparently?) Expats buy Japanese country house for a song and get way more than they bargained for (maybe in Nagano, Niigata? Answer: Tochigi) – they did a lovely job!

Minka: A Farmhouse in Japan (article introducing a film via NYTimes (paywall)

An ongoing building project in Okayama (Japanese, FB page)

Related-ish:

Pre-fab houses to put on your cheap land instead of renovating: BESS

Muji is making (at least prototyping) 3 styles of pre-fab houses with architectural charm

Japan Open Air Folk House Museum, representative historic houses from around Japan, disassembled and reconstructed in Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa-ken

All About Kura from Japan This {kura storehouses are common on olden farm properties, and built this dang fortresses, can be made into guesthouses, art studio, chill out spaces etc, / lots of different details and styles, mine it truly the best one ever though}

this is my kura and i love it

More DaveO riffs

Regarding “Free” Houses in Japan in Vice” (from a comment…)

“Someone sends me one of various articles about the abandoned/free/cheap house situation in Japan weekly – which is fun and fine… but the articles gloss over so much truth and nuance of the situation.

Here are a few notes (rapidly written and unedited) about this topic – curious to hear other opinions (and yes i do know several people who have taken advantage of such deals but they are either Japanese/married to Japanese – so NO you can’t just show up from another country and claim your house and ping uber-eats for sushi delivery). Let’s go:

When i was in Japan in early 1990s, i found renegades who were already re-populating remote areas… while the ageing population situation is MUCH more pronounced now, a de-rural-ification began after WW2 when so many never returned home and villages were populated only by old folks who were moved into bigger towns by US-led occupation government initiatives. As such, many remote rural area were unsettled for decades – increasingly so in the “bubble years” of late 1980s early 1990s when there was a gold rush of great jobs etc. Anyhow, i stayed in remote areas and learned many old ways of Japan (harvesting mushrooms and mountain vegetables and rice etc).

Being back now, i recently visited the village where i farmed enoki mushrooms (Saji, Yazu-gun) and while it was a calm mountain village in those days, there was “life” – now it and many other villages are amalgamated into the larger city and seemed almost empty. The basic shops and gas stations etc are closed and despite improved roads, didn’t see another car for :30 mins.

Realize the article is trying to be “cute” but its much more complicated than they make out. As for Akiya abandoned property directory, there are loads of places available but what Vice neglects to say is:

One more thought about immigration, there is a big move to open up immigration to bring in workers for “rough work” on a temp basis (mostly targeting lower-wage-expectation Asian countries) as well as easing requirements for “unique skill” workers (including some creative industries and high-skill – international law/business etc) but still a loooong way to go as the pinch of the ageing population is just starting to be felt and there is a lot of denial about the impact (esp by the elder-dominated political class). There is no chance but to open up more, or let the country wither – Either way, i’m along for the ride.

Personally, i hope things open up and diligent respectful foreigners come to re-populate rural areas and keep culture and interestingness alive and growing. Come visit for starters!”

~~

More:

Japan Travel Field Notes

Japan: Travel primer / places to go, getting around, accomms, culture, etiquette and geography

Have something to add to the resource list? Especially links to your projects and experience… drop a comment below or get in touch