Unlike in other countries, Japanese homes become valueless over time. But as the population shrinks, can its cities finally learn to slow down and refurb?
In Japan, a growing portion of the country’s housing stock is unoccupied and increasingly attracting American buyers. As Insider has previously reported, Japan has a glut of older, abandoned homes in rural areas. With the country’s population in decline, there simply aren’t enough people willing to purchase these houses.
The country has at least 8.5 million such “akiya,” the Japanese word for unoccupied home, according to government data from 2018. Some experts believe there are as many as 11 million empty houses. When owners of these traditional homes die, those who inherit the properties often don’t want or cannot maintain them. In Japan, land remains valuable, while houses lose value over time and are often torn down and rebuilt.
Government officials are concerned that growing numbers of akiyas are hurting their efforts to revitalize rural parts of the country. So they’re subsidizing renovations and selling homes often for around $25,000 and sometimes for as little as $500.
Unlike in other countries, Japanese homes gradually depreciate over time, becoming utterly valueless within 20 or 30 years. When someone moves out of a home or dies, the house, unlike the land it sits on, has no resale value and is typically demolished.
Why Is It, Though?
This scrap-and-build approach is a quirk of the Japanese housing market that can be explained variously by low-quality construction to meet demand quickly after the second world war. Repeated building code revisions to improve earthquake resilience and a cycle of poor maintenance due to the lack of incentive to make homes marketable for resale.
In Midorigaoka, even the newer homes built in the 80s and 90s are nearing the end of their expected lifespan. Under normal circumstances, their days might be numbered.
The Thursfields, profiled by the Times, have documented their renovations on Youtube. Viewers can see how they transformed a home primarily in disrepair into a beautiful, minimalist property.
“This was truly an abandoned house in terms of the declined inheritance and everything left behind by the previous owners,” said Jaya, who’s Australian.