Japanese government is selling houses for $500 to populate rural areas
insider.com
insider.com
This keeps getting resensationalized[0],
While it varies a lot per region, a lot of these can come with clauses such as making it your residence, doing certain maintenance/reparations/replacement etc.
I have been looking around a bit for something like this in the local akiyabanks, but there's just a handful of items on there, most have been there for years and the entry of new ones is really low. Not to say that there hasn't been success, but the reality is that most of these require significant investment and/or dedication to be attractive. There are also other programs, like renting them out rent-free in exchange for maintenance (really, would you invest 100,000s of yen to replace the boiler in exchange for rent on your 6-month notice rental contract?). Still, most empty homes are not part of anything like this and are left to ruin. Anywhere except the bigger cities (and sometimes even there), this has a significant impact on towns. Driving anywhere in a more remote prefecture and you see abandoned houses falling apart pretty much everywhere. It can really be nice living here, though.
0: https://soranews24.com/2015/04/10/so-who-wants-a-free-house-..., https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191023-what-will-japa..., https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/05/asia/japan-vacant-akiya-g..., https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-ghost-houses,
At the same time, this also is like the analogy "a solution looking for a problem". Supply exists, but demand does not.
For example, across the Rust Belt in the US, probably someone could buy a house for $10k or an entire block of homes for dirt cheap, but it would be rundown and not very much fun to live in a town with more inconveniences than amenities.
Unless someone is trying to do the homesteading(?) thing, having a free/cheap house somewhere is only a small part of the equation. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would bet even if someone from a city like San Fran, LA, or NY took a deal to live in (e.g.) rural Missouri in a $500 house, they wouldn't be able to last 2-3 years before going stir-crazy.
In 2021?
> Maybe I'm wrong, but I would bet even if someone from a city like San Fran, LA, or NY took a deal to live in (e.g.) rural Missouri in a $500 house, they wouldn't be able to last 2-3 years before going stir-crazy.
According to zillow, uninhabitable \ barely habitable wood frame homes requiring substantial repairs still sell for about $30,000 in rural Missouri.
At the very lowest end of the scale I found habitable houses in the 20-30k range in KS, OK and that area in small farming towns that have seen significant post-1960s exodus and population decline.
If you have the budget to build your own custom house and do something like an off grid solar setup, there's plenty of places in rural eastern WA state where you can buy 20 or 40 acres for $1k per acre.
You can't create demand by government fiat. People aren't living in rural Japan or Missouri because nobody wants to live there, for a littany of reasons of which the direct financial cost of home ownership is but one.
The external value of the location should not be heavily capitalized into the sales price regardless of the amenities of the location. When someone asks $400,000 for a building which costs $200,000 to replace, the buyers are likely to build a new building next door for cheaper unless the land is impossible to acquire or being held off the market at high prices. The duration which private owners are allowed to hold vacant land off the market and hold out for higher prices is ultimate determined by public financial policy.
I found some dirt cheap ones.
edit: This is a good indication of real estate bubble btw.
$11,700
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/114-S-Ardmore-Ave-Dayton-...
For example will a bank even lend money against such a home or is there some underlying assumption that you'd have to demolish and rebuild new before they'd even consider it?
The land is seemingly worth nothing and the building itself worth zero or really a liability.
If they're being sold for $500 why would you expect a bank to want to lend money against it? It already has no value as collateral.
=PMT(0.02/12, 30*12, -500)
$1.85 per month!
And yes, no sane bank is going to lend against collateral that is fundamentally worthless. Construction loans are problematic because the property can be worth -$$$ if say the work isn’t finished and the builder starts putting (western concept, not sure how it maps to Japan) builders liens on the property for all the work they did, and then it all rots because no one put windows or a roof on it.
These properties are at these prices because they are currently fundamentally not worth more. They sit on the market because they won’t even sell at that price.
This doesn't make any sense to me. What economic mechanisms cause it to be true?
> Japanese houses, unlike those in the rest of the world, supposedly depreciate to $0 in just 25 years
Same for this.
I've never heard of either of these being true; do you have a link?
>Unlike in other countries, Japanese homes gradually depreciate over time, becoming completely valueless within 20 or 30 years.
I also expect the situation is different in Hokkaido: it's drier with lots of winter precipitation (spring is the driest season in sapporo versus winter for tokyo), and the more extreme winter weather probably leads to higher quality construction (for instance central heating and extensive insulation is common in hokkaido while it's quite rare on honshu which tends to go by "tactical heating" and quite drafty houses).
- economic value (how much money it produces or how much money it saves by having it), both current and projected/speculative.
- emotional value (this is my grandfathers house, I wouldn’t part with it for anything)! Or FOMO, or ‘being established’. How much is it worth to feel that way?
- scarcity value. You need x or something terrible will happen, it’s in a bidding war, how much can you spend to win? This can also be current or projected.
The signal you’re seeing is that for people eligible to buy the property, it is near zero value on all these axis.
The land is worth as much as it otherwise is. This is essentially a very large subsidy towards interesting people in living in rural areas (which is where most of those houses would be).
> For example will a bank even lend money against such a home or is there some underlying assumption that you'd have to demolish and rebuild new before they'd even consider it?
The bank doesn't care about the house if the building is considered to have no value either way.
I may be mistaken but my understanding is that japanese houses depreciate quickly because they're considered largely disposable, at least when it comes to "modern" homes.
It seems like the timing of things is such that by the end of your 25 year mortgage the house is worth $0. Ok.
So what happens if after this point you want to borrow against your house?
In NA nbd since the bank knows it can sell the house. In Japan is the bank squeamish about whether they can sell the house because the house is "worth $0."
Similarly I wonder if you wanted to buy a house that is "worth $0" is the bank only going to give you a mortgage if you are going to knock it down and build a new house?
> So what happens if after this point you want to borrow against your house?
You… don't? You never did? What do you fail to understand in "the land is worth money, the house is not"?
> In NA nbd since the bank knows it can sell the house. In Japan is the bank squeamish about whether they can sell the house because the house is "worth $0."
Japanese banks are squeamish either way, but they can sell the land. The land is not worth $0.
> Similarly I wonder if you wanted to buy a house that is "worth $0" is the bank only going to give you a mortgage if you are going to knock it down and build a new house?
You're not buying a house, you're buying land, which has a house on top of it, which you may want to replace.
When you buy a car you buy a car, you don't buy the seat upholstery, and you can replace that. Well the land's the car, it's the actual thing.
For example when you buy bare land recreational property you often have to pay cash because no lender wants to have bare land on their books.
You will struggle to get a lender to give you any money for a condemned building (I've tried).
In Canada it is simple to get a mortgage on on a property with a house on it because there's a "usable" house on it and the bank can easily sell the property.
Perhaps this is the same in Japan as well, even if the house is 25 years old, but it depends on how they look at that 25 year old "worth $0" property. Perhaps as long as it's "livable" lenders don't mind and one doesn't run into the road blocks one would run into if they were trying to buy bare land.
Or perhaps it's simply much easier to buy bare land in Japan than it is in Canada!
Have you considered that a country where houses are essentially never considered usable buildings would have a different outlook on the matter?
> Or perhaps it's simply much easier to buy bare land in Japan than it is in Canada!
Well yes considering it’s more or less the norm in Japan but not in Canada.
Land has value in Japan. Houses do not.
Free or nominally priced homes: https://www.businessinsider.com/where-are-free-homes-cities-...
These are also very barely within the definition of a house by Western standards. Houses in Japan, especially these ones are less permanent affairs. Poor construction quality, no central heating, etc.
This is not a good opportunity for people outside of Japan.
Also it’s very easy for anyone to buy property.
Japan has some pretty high bars and the number of naturalized people is quite small -- about 10,000 per year, and these are primarily Koreans of Japanese descent. The high bar is not the "good moral character" bit (which is also required but that is common) but rather financial stability. So if you are from a wealthy nation and a high earner you will be fine, but that is not the typical immigrant profile, and so for this reason there are very few naturalized immigrants in Japan compared to US or other nations that do not have financial stability as a criteria for naturalization.
do they? I always thought it referred to long term residency.
E.g. I consider myself an immigrant even tho I do not have the citizenship of the country I live in.
e.g. Merriam-Webster: "a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence"
OED online: "a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country."
Especially since this can clash with legal reality. Undocumented migrants sometimes intend to stay permanently, but as soon as immigration laws are enforced, they will leave. And many foreign workers who intend to return to their home country never do so, rendering the distinction moot.
It depends on how the country defines it, but to "immigrate" doesn't generally mean naturalization.
Immigration means to obtain permanent residency (in the U.S., a green card or LPR status; in Canada, Australia, NZ, landed immigrant or permanent resident status; in the UK, indefinitely leave to remain). Permanent residency generally confers most rights of citizenship, apart from a few like the right to hold a passport of that country, to vote (exceptions exist), etc.
Naturalization means to obtain full citizenship. It's the step that comes after immigration, and it is optional. Not all immigrants elect to naturalize for various reasons (e.g. wanting to keep original citizenship in cases where dual citizenship is prohibited, tax rules, military service, etc.). Some choose to remain permanent residents forever, and they can. It's their choice.
And you're right -- if someone has a temporary status like a foreign worker status (even if it's infinitely renewable), that would be considered neither immigration nor naturalization.
I'm not sure how things work in Japan, but it is possible for a country to be easy to immigrate into, but hard to naturalize in. These two things can be simultaneously true.
(in other words, easy to get permanent resident status, but hard to get citizenship)
There is a widespread idea to count permanent migrants only, but in practice, that's impossible to determine in the first place, and has no tangible consequences either.
Think about undocumented migrants, who do not have the right to abode, permanent or otherwise. Think about nations that don't offer permanent residency to newly arriving immigrants, or at all. Think about people who already have the right to abode (e.g. a citizen of Ireland in the UK) - are they immigrants without setting foot in the country?
Tying migration to a permanent status just doesn't make sense. Indeed, the UN Migration Agency (IOM) defines a migrant as:
> any person who is moving or has moved across an international border or within a State away from his/her habitual place of residence, regardless of
(1) the person’s legal status;
(2) whether the movement is voluntary or involuntary;
(3) what the causes for the movement are; or
(4) what the length of the stay is.
I believe you're confusing immigration[0] and migration[1]. The former aims for permanent residency or naturalization, the latter is temporary.
Please note that general dictionaries are always a poor source when discussing word definitions. Their aim is to clarify word usage, not to define terms.
Wiktionary is also sadly of garbage quality, and I say that as a former very active wiktionary editor.
Preventing immigration (both permanent and temporary) has been a political priority in Japan for centuries. Are you saying this has changed recently? The US is a bit special because even with the hurdles it has it still receives a lot of immigrants. Japan, to my knowledge, would never accept being in such a position.
I would hazard a guess this is because of their population crisis, maybe? They have one of the oldest populations in the world and their birth rate is still less than 1.5. That's a recipe for social and economic disorder, with current levels of automation.
Implying that the very immigration friendly modern Japanese government is the same as Tokugawa Ieyasu is almost as absurd as implying that Britain is a divorce crazy country due to Henry VIII.
Looking at some sources the issue seems to be fairly complex, however it does indeed seem fairly easy relative to other countries like Canada to gain Japanese citizenship (though very few apply).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Japan#Immigrant...
Looking at this and other citizenship guides, the main requirements seem to be that:
1. You live and work in Japan for 5 years (not counting student visas)
2. Are the age of majority in your country and over 20
3. Have not broken any laws while in Japan
4. Are able to support yourself financially and are willing to renounce other citizenships
It seems that about 90% of people that apply for naturalization are accepted. Yet less than ~10,000 are accepted every year, so applying for citizenship seems unpopular relative to other G7 countries.
Neat. I wonder why I was so certain that immigration was next to impossible and only visas were granted?
In a country like japan where it's more by the book, I'm not sure although. To get PR it takes 10 years to 1 year, so that might be a barrier, or maybe it's just a place that doesn't pay well + language barriers and thus wasn't that much of a draw to immigrate to?
That puts a lot of permanent residents off - why go through that when they can already stay indefinitely anyway?
2. Use it as capital for your newly formed Japanese company
3. Rent it out to yourself or someone else, or AirBnb it
You should now be eligible for a Business Manager visa.
I rent and don't own any property, but I've seen people do this.
Granted English is not my first language but this is the first time I hear about this supposed distinction.
Can I, as a citizen/resident of the US, buy one of these $500 houses and keep it as a vacation home for whenever I feel like going to Japan and chilling?
That's literally less than 3 days worth of hotel stays at a decent hotel, and it sounds like an excellent deal if there aren't other strings attached.
Watch the beginning of Totoro to get an idea of what an abandoned house in rural Japan looks like (rundown, in the middle of nowhere). Vacation homes anywhere get quite dusty in a mere week, so you'd be looking at a spring cleaning event on every trip (very much like in the movie).
Bear in mind also that flight tickets to Japan aren't exactly cheap either; you can get a week worth of hotel stays in the US for the price of the round trip flight from US to Japan.
It's not like the "spring cleaning" mentioned by others is a deal breaker either, it's probably possible to find someone to do some of that for pay if you speak enough Japanese.
Obviously having something close enough to trains / relevant cities might be a long shot, but the payoff would be huge if anything like this existed.
Fingers crossed that someone with insight responds
In their case, they had fairly specific location requirements and thus restricted themselves to Ibaraki prefecture. So fairly close to Tokyo (1 hour train ride I believe?), but they paid much more than $500 -- more like $20-30k if I recall. Once you go through the bureaucracy of buying it (making sure it doesn't have a tax lien, etc.), you're basically faced with a falling-down hoarder house that you have to clean out and likely tear down and rebuild completely. Theirs was also a quite large lot and a nice traditional Japanese farmhouse called a minka or kominka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minka). So, not typical of these $500 houses -- those are probably going to be further out from the cities, much smaller lots, and complete teardowns. But do expect to invest significant time and money to get it to a habitable state. And you'll likely need to speak much more than tourist Japanese to deal with the local bureaucracy and builders.
But if you're willing to put in the effort, and you do like the quiet Japanese country life as a getaway, it could well be a good investment. This is pretty much my plan for (semi-)retirement in a few years.
The municipality of Triora, a beautiful historical town now nearly abandoned, very close to the Ligurian coast in Italy, is selling houses as low as 1 (one!) euro, in an attempt to re-populate the area and get someone to invest in restoring the historical landmarks...
https://1eurohouses.com/triora-imperia-liguria/
Honestly, this is a real bargain considering what this place is like and its historical significance.
Granted, you have to commit to restoring the place, but still!
Easy access to Japanese food, small town Japanese aesthetics, and unique landscapes are what made it worth it.
Not to mention that even if you want to go to some of the more popular areas of Japan, it's rather easy to get to them from the rural areas with the excellent public transit infrastructure they have, so if you have a job that you can work remotely, and you like the rural daily lifestyle but occasional urban fun and weekend trips to the city, Japan is just about as ideal as a place as you can get to have that lifestyle.
Go look it up for yourself.
You can't say, oh all of rural Japan gets 10mbps. Cause every different part has different options.
You need to go look at a real estate website that has internet availability information.
Many folks resort to LTE or WiMax to compensate, which has poor performance in general and even worse in poor weather.
For context, even in Tokyo, you would be surprised at the number of apartment buildings that come with shared 100Mbit lines for 30+ units, with no way of installing faster direct lines (in large part due to owner/agency refusal).
If you’re desperate find a place that already has or allows Sony Nuro installation. They lay fibers given owners’ permission, whereas NTT won’t and just send you a Fast Ethernet VDSL modem(with a blue Cat.5 8P4C cable to match!)
This is almost always the owner/agency actually. The above discussion is in context of being the owner.
NTT networks are extremely congested, so speed you get will be either just ok or bad.
This is all applicable to greater Tokyo.
Needless to say, 4G is nothing of impressive with spot coverage, if you go mountainside.
That's one 0 too much as long as we're talking residential/"family". Or you'd have to provide sources/quotes.
I just had fiber installed (no previous connection here or to the closer neighboring houses) in a small house in a rural area. It was indeed 1.5 months of waiting, but the costs are 10% of what you're claiming.