this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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I actually looked into that property once; there was no way it was going to happen for a number of reasons. I ended up buying a house in much better condition in another area.
I really need to do a video about the topic or something. There are many, many landmines with stuff like this. For a very TL;DR and assuming every single other thing is perfect: owning a home does not give you the right to spend any extra time in Japan nor grant a visa; you are on the hook for taxes, fees, septic maintenance (though the above property may have been a pit toilet; I don't remember), and other bills which will have to be paid from a Japanese bank account. There are also certain neighborhood association obligations, property maintenance, fire control, etc.
I watched a video from an American guy who did this. But he already had residence, and made it very clear that if you don't have residence, doing something like this would be a waste of time and money. He bought a massive junker of a house and it took him like 2 years and a bunch of help to make it livable. Still a good video, and still a cool idea, assuming you have certain ducks already lined up. Definitely not something to do on a whim.
I looked at doing something like this in quite a few countries, and skipped on Japan pretty quickly. Happy with my decision though.
Essentially, there's usually good reason it was abandoned.
Additionally, houses in Japan aren't really built to last. Properties like these are usually bulldozed and rebuit when purchased.
I knew it...
Ghosts
Basically.
Grandma died and nobody wants to live in a 50 year old house in the middle of nowhere.
For $3400, I'm fine with living with tormented ghosts.
Building standards are improving but, yeah, slowly. Kominka over 100 years can have really good structure if well maintained, but it definitely would not be something who isn't already knowledgeable about them. The majority fall into ruin.
Also, why buy if you don't want to live there?
It's not gonna earn rent out there. Italy, among other countries also let's you buy abandoned homes.
Not sure if they're still doing it, but a few years back (holy shit maybe a decade), Italy was even offering to pay people to move there. But there were massive conditions. Like, you had to buy a historical property, maintain it to their standards, and open a business to boost tourism, or something along those lines. I looked into it and was kind of intrigued, but it seemed pretty obvious it was designed to draw rich expats, not average losers like me.
I believe they now charge $1. Still unaffordable.
In my case, I moved to the Japanese countryside because I wanted to farm, mostly. But, yeah, I'm definitely not the average case.
Sounds amazing, as long as the locals don't show dissent.
So far so good a year in. Everyone's been super friendly and helpful.
In some cases in Italy the condition for buying is that you'll live there.
That's good.