First lesson of Japan’s

The promise of cheap or free houses in Japan has dreamers and chancers rushing to some of the country’s more rural hamlets to make chump-change bets on the disused and dilapidated.
Quaint farmhouses. Traditional wood, clay, straw and bamboo kominka with thatched roofs. Remote mountain lodges with million-dollar views.
For the right person with the right skills and the right expectations, buying an akiya, which means empty house in Japanese, can be a rewarding experience that yields a unique space and a livable home, competitively priced.
It’s also possible that a run-down homestead in Japan could turn out to be a money pit offering little but surprises and constant disappointment, and that a poorly thought-out gamble might end up doing harm to a declining rural community that can ill afford more setbacks.
“A lot of people hear ‘free houses’ or ‘cheap houses,’ and they think it’s going to be this candyland — $10,000 and get your dream home — but it’s not that crazy,” said Parker J. Allen, co-founder of Akiya & Inaka, an akiya-focused consultancy.
Depopulating Japan has about 10 million houses that are abandoned or vacant for so long they are considered unrentable or unsellable.
Japanese buyers have historically placed little value on older properties, with market prices roughly tracking the depreciation schedule, which is a relatively short 22 years for wooden structures. After a point, the asset is considered to be near worthless, eventually regarded as a liability due to the cost of removal.
Distance from a train station is also a hard determinant in the market. Land values drop precipitously proportional to the time it takes to walk to the nearest stop in what is known as the railway-line effect.
A fixer-upper in the inaka, the Japanese word for boondocks, has never been a big get for the average Japanese homebuyer.
This started to change slightly with the pandemic. The value of a rural bolt-hole was better understood as the world seemed to become more dangerous and unpredictable, and domestic demand for remote properties picked up a bit.
What really got the market going was international interest. The possibility of cheap housing in Japan is incredibly attractive to people from countries where homes are unaffordable. It is also of interest to those from economies where speculation on older properties is a more mainstream investment activity.
A proliferation of intermediaries has made a punt on a teetering shack on the other side of the planet a dangerously easy transaction.

Websites such as akiya-athome.jp, akiyabanks.com, allakiyas.com, akiya-mart.com, homes.co.jp and countless others — including those operated by local governments — offer searches, comprehensive listings, prices, contact information and heaps of English-language guidance for buyers.
Social media has also been a factor, and the result has been a near mania as YouTube videos show massive $1 houses and other screaming deals.
“There’s all sorts of different people who started doing this. It’s almost like the gold rush, right? You’ve got all of these speculators in covered wagons coming to the promised land, which is the inaka,” Allen said.
Akiya brokers and consultants warn that most vacant houses in Japan cost far more than nothing, though zero-yen properties do still exist.
Allen said that ¥8 million ($55,000) is a reasonable budget. He added that demand for ¥5 million properties is especially high and that these houses move very quickly once they hit the market.
That is just the beginning.
Renovations are usually the most expensive part of the journey to having an akiya that can be called a home. The laundry list of what needs to be done is long and tends to get longer as the process drags on.
It begins with termite treatment and retrofitting to make the structure earthquake-resistant. Flooring, wallpaper and drywall often must be replaced, while roofs and exterior walls need to be repaired and tatami mats changed. Bathrooms and kitchens are normally updated or completely redone, and expensive replumbing and rewiring are sometimes required.
New insulation and new windows are possibilities to consider, as are asbestos abatement and foundation repairs. Mold can be a concern.

According to a 2021 post on realestate.co.jp, roof repairs can cost as much as ¥3.5 million, as can external wall repairs. Thatching a roof can cost multiple times that figure, and it might be hard to find people who can even do that work anymore.
“Most of these akiya, they’re not very good,” Allen said of the cheaper places.
The internet abounds with tales of “akiya bros” who bought a house for a song and fixed it up with duct tape and throw rugs and couldn’t be happier. And many industrious buyers doing a moderate amount of work on a reasonably solid structure are indeed able to achieve a pleasant, habitable dwelling for somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000.
Costs can nevertheless quickly mount and break budgets, especially for those seeking to achieve a showplace property.
A precise figure for renovation costs is hard to come by due to the fact that akiya can be in just about any possible state of decay, from complete wrecks to near move-in quality and only in need of a touch of paint. Some buyers choose to do as much work as possible themselves, while others farm out everything. High-quality materials can be chosen, or budget options.
“That’s a good question, but pretty hard to answer as it depends on all sorts of factors,” said Matthew Ketchum, owner of akiyaz.io, when asked about total renovation costs. “For a while now, I’ve stated that it’s reasonable to expect somewhere between ¥5 million and ¥10 million in renovations on a property that needs renovations in the first place.”
Anecdotal evidence suggests that buying an akiya and doing a full makeover and thorough overhaul can quickly approach the cost of a new structure. It might even be more expensive.
This is especially true when the value of a person’s time is considered and the risk associated with an old house in terms of surprises along the way. The math in favor of new build is especially compelling in Japan, where residential construction has become highly efficient and where houses are built with a limited lifespan in mind, making them remarkably affordable.
“Renovations are expensive, so look for the diamond in the rough. Look for a property that’s pretty much ready to go,” Allen advises akiya hunters.
“Your average person doesn’t have the skills necessary to do extensive repairs. So you’re going to end up working with renovation companies or builders, and it’s going to cost you a lot of money, oftentimes more than you paid for the property,” he warns.
Akiya professionals say that it is all about the right property matched with the right person. If the house is structurally sound and otherwise appealing and the buyer has a taste for hard work and is willing to make a time commitment, then value can be achieved.
“It’s real estate. Even if it’s cheap, it’s not the cheapest thing, and that’s not just in terms of finance, that’s in terms of commitment and time too,” said Ketchum.
Other catches can trip up the uninitiated.

Akiya on designated agricultural land must be run as farms, not as hobby farms, but as proper working farms, cheaphousesjapan.com notes. This means complex approvals and visits by agricultural committees.
The site also ticks off a few other concerns, such as taxes, inspections and onerous contract requirements.
For many small Japanese communities, the vacant-house buying boom has brought the promise of economic recovery after years of decline. Abandoned properties are eyesores and dangers. They are bad to have sitting around, and they are expensive to remove.
Successful akiya investments can help in revitalizing these areas and are usually greeted enthusiastically. Akiya deals gone wrong can be bad for everyone, including the communities in which the old houses are situated.
“One thing that comes up as an issue is people who buy stuff that is pretty rundown, which then gives a little bit of hope to the local community that that rundown thing, which is ugly, we didn’t like it, that somebody has bought it, and oh boy, maybe they’re going to do something with it,” Ketchum said. “Then they get busy, or they find excuses, they don’t come out and then the snow comes, and the roof collapses.”
“So the thing that was already ugly and potentially dangerous, that for a split second everybody was thinking, ‘oh, boy, this is going to get better,’ is now actually worse, which makes the community further shut down to other potential future investments coming in,” he adds.
“I do highly stress the importance of understanding what you’re getting yourself into from a human point of view. Rural Japan is quite communal, and there are definitely more traditional, closed-minded communities.”
“If you just run in there like a bull in a porcelain shop, you could easily not just make yourself look like a jerk and have a bad time, but actually negatively affect the community around you — even if you leave,” Ketchum concludes.
Dani and Evan Benton started researching akiya properties before moving to Japan. By the time they arrived in 2023, they already had a business plan and a building picked out.
They now operate an akiya guesthouse and honeybee farm on Ōmishima Island, Ehime Prefecture. The American couple has purchased a second akiya with business expansion in mind.
Working with a local real estate agent, they chose to renovate an older akiya, maintaining traditional Showa Era details and documenting the renovation process on YouTube.

They spent $19,000 on the renovation, including supplies and contractors, and $9,000 on the house, including taxes. The couple said buying something more expensive and in better condition wasn’t an option, as they wanted to breathe life into an older building.
“We like older things and we wanted to do the renovation. We weren’t really tempted by anything else,” Dani Benton said, noting that some beautiful move-in-ready akiya are on the market for those who don’t want to renovate.
This decision to renovate was welcomed by many in the community, with the previous owner, who grew up in the house, still living close by.
“He’s very happy to see the house with new life in it, and our neighbors are happy that it’s a guest house. If they see guests are there, they’ll give us oranges or treats to give to the guests,” Dani Benton said.
Ketchum suggests that entrepreneurially minded people, such as recent graduates and people working in IT and tourism, are needed in the countryside, more so than the families being encouraged by the government.
“Get the adventurous folks out there,” he said.
One quality of an akiya owner is intrepidness, both Ketchum and Allen note.
“It’s answering people’s sense of adventure,” Allen said, adding that the opportunity cost is not too high, particularly for those who can work remotely.
“Rural Japan is very attractive to a lot of people, except they’re also terrified of it. They don’t know where to go. They don’t know what to eat. They don’t know where to stay. They don’t know anything. So they’re stuck in Tokyo fantasizing about rural Japan,” Ketchum said.
“I bought a house. I’m going to make 5% on it in 10 years. That’s not really my interest. My interest is, geez, there’s an entire country that people are simultaneously infatuated with and terrified by, and that’s a strange combination. Let’s fix that,” he said.
Ketchum, who writes extensively about rural Japan, said the more people explore the Japanese countryside for themselves, the more appealing and possible buying a home or holiday home appears, which in turn helps support the local, unique communities governments are trying to revitalize.
“It’s not just the property that we’re talking about. It’s the experiences that the property facilitates. Akiya, to me, are very much a diving board into a greater life experience,” Ketchum said.