Foreigners are increasingly snapping up old and abandoned houses in Japan for incredibly low prices to set up hotels or to rent them out.
Thanks to Japan’s graying and declining population, the number of abandoned houses, known as akiya, is increasing rapidly, attracting buyers from overseas who admire Japanese culture and who can’t buy similar properties back home due to high prices and massive inflation.
On the other hand, a weak Yen welcomes them here with open arms.
Coline Aguirre, a Parisian, also bought an akiya in the central prefecture of Nara for $33,000. “In France, if I want a small garage I will have to spend €100,000 (US$108,000),” she was quoted as saying by SCMP.
“I’m going to have do a lot of renovation in the house, but the price is still going to be much lower than if I had bought a house in France. So I was thinking to have a renovation budget twice the price of the house,” she added.
Why people are buying abandoned houses?
According to observers, people buy houses in rural Japan at cheaper rates only to later operate them as vacation properties for Airbnbs.
“They can reside in a beautiful part of Japan in a traditional house and earn income from visitors. It’s the fulfilment of a dream for many,” Kazuaki Nebu, country head of property portal IQI Japan, was quoted as saying by SCMP.
Aguirre also has similar plans for her property.
“Maybe in about 10 years, I would like this house to be a hotel and I won’t have to live in it any more, and someone else can manage it and it will just be an investment property,” she says.
Japan’s ‘akiya’ problem
In 2018, Japan had approximately 8.49 million unoccupied houses, a significant increase of 1.5 times from 1998, constituting 13.6 per cent of all residences, as reported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
According to projections from the Nomura Research Institute, if not addressed through large-scale demolitions, the number of vacant homes is expected to surge to 23.03 million by 2038, representing 31.5 per cent of all houses. This means that nearly one in three houses could potentially remain unoccupied.
The issue of abandoned homes has become a pressing concern in Japan, with one in seven houses currently vacant.