Series: Buying Cheap Property in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan — Article 7 of 30 The short answer is almost certainly not. I know that’s not what you want to hear. You’ve been reading about akiya selling for the price of a used Honda Civic, and you’re thinking there must be some way to finance this with …
In early January 2024, I was living in Hawaii and doing the math on houses I couldn’t afford. Hawaii was off the table — I’d been living there, I have a daughter there, and the median home price was somewhere north of $1,500,000 on Oahu. Oregon wasn’t much better for what I wanted. I was …
You found a house. It’s cheap. It’s in Otaru. The photos show tatami floors, a small garden, and what might be water damage in the ceiling of the second bedroom. You want to buy it. Now what? The Japanese property purchase process is more formal than the American one in some ways and simpler in …
Read more “What Does the Purchase Process Actually Look Like?”
No. I could end the article there, but the follow-up question is where everyone trips. So let me say it plainly: you do not need a visa, residency status, or Japanese citizenship to buy property in Japan. You can fly in as a tourist, sign a contract, wire the money, and fly home as the …
Akiya (空き家) means empty house. That’s the literal translation — 空 (empty/sky) and 家 (house/home). The word itself is mundane. Every language has a term for a vacant property. What makes the Japanese version different is the scale. As of the 2023 Housing and Land Survey, Japan has approximately 9 million akiya. Nine million empty …
Read more “What Is an Akiya and Why Are There Nine Million of Them?”
Less than a used car. Sometimes less than a very used car. I bought my house in Otaru for under $30,000. That number is real, not a hook. It’s a three-bedroom wood-frame house on its own lot in a residential neighborhood thirty-five minutes by train from Sapporo, the fifth-largest city in Japan. The median home …