[HN Gopher] Japanese government is selling houses for $500 to po...
___________________________________________________________________
Japanese government is selling houses for $500 to populate rural
areas
Author : protomyth
Score : 104 points
Date : 2021-05-31 15:36 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.insider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.insider.com)
| 3np wrote:
| I live in a Japanese small town and have been looking into this,
| some random thoughts:
|
| 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,
| leoc wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwRjO3kHxU4 seems to be pretty
| balanced and informative too.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There are places in the US which will give you a home for free
| and some will even pay you to move in as long as you fix it up
| while you live there.
| the-dude wrote:
| So where do I go?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Free land here: https://www.wideopencountry.com/free-land-in-
| the-us/
|
| Free or nominally priced homes:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/where-are-free-homes-
| cities-...
| dheera wrote:
| Okay, so VERY serious question here.
|
| 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.
| panny wrote:
| You can, but it may collapse in an earthquake or landslide
| before you arrive. Common wisdom in Japan is an empty home will
| begin to collapse within two years. Then you need to pay for
| disposal, which is a major expense. Buying a $500 home will be
| like adopting an old shelter dog. It requires lots of care and
| will still die soon. If you want to move in and make it a great
| place it might be possible. As a vacation home for one week a
| year to see sakura flowers? No, bad idea.
| raincom wrote:
| Do you think these $500 homes are habitable?
| lhorie wrote:
| It's probably not as romanticizing as you expect.
|
| 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.
| dheera wrote:
| I mean yes, they aren't cheap, I've been there a couple of
| times before, but lodging costs in Japan are sky high as
| well, which is more my intention.
| lhorie wrote:
| Well, if your idea of chilling is being away from
| civilization w/ moderate amounts of physical labor, then
| rather than acquiring a rural abandoned property, a
| possibly less committed option with more flexibility for
| tourism is camping.
| janmo wrote:
| There is no mention of how the internet connectivity is.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I see utility poles and neighboring homes in the photos, so
| most likely gigabit wired and LTE wireless are available.
| Amazon Prime next day delivery probably works too.
| dubcanada wrote:
| huh? It's not a real estate website. It's a news website.
|
| Go look it up for yourself.
| janmo wrote:
| I think this is an important point. I would consider living
| in a remote area, but usually the internet access there goes
| from very slow to non-existing.
| dubcanada wrote:
| None of the information has anything to do with a specific
| location, every single individual house has specific
| internet options.
|
| 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.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| This is Japan we're talking about. Remote isn't _that_
| remote. Like numpad0 mentioned above, even in the outskirts
| of small towns, you can typically expect aerial fiber
| pretty much everywhere, and the actual broadband options
| will depend on the last few meters.
| janmo wrote:
| Thank you, this is the kind of information I was looking
| for.
| vnchr wrote:
| Coming soon to your farm... StarLink!
| jacoblambda wrote:
| If the house is in the few thousand to tens of thousands of
| USD range, you could probably afford to pay for a fibre run
| out to your property with the money saved compared to the
| cost of a house in the US or EU.
| 3np wrote:
| Japan has extremely good fiber connectivity. You can live in a
| small cottage high up on the mountainside of a small village
| and have the NTT monopoly get you near-1Gbps installed for
| 20,000 yen and ~5,000 per month. You can usually get cable for
| cheaper and even the LTE can be good enough for many.
| bruxis wrote:
| I'm not sure where you have this impression from, but I can
| assure you that in many non-urban areas getting fiber
| (hikari) is a non-option.
|
| 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).
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's NTT policy or something to lay only single 1Gbps fiber
| per building, ever, so if you're living in a single family
| home with nice front yard you're forced to share the fiber
| with -- no one else. But for 30 units apartment your
| connection is at mercy of 25 kids trying to download Apex
| Legends in background while taking remote schooling
| classes.
|
| 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!)
| walrus01 wrote:
| One of the things that has led to widespread gigabit class FTTH
| in Japan is that they're not averse to using overhead utility
| poles and lines almost everywhere. As an ISP it's much less
| costly and complicated to do real FTTH if your infrastructure
| can be purely aerial.
| [deleted]
| eloff wrote:
| Japan is very difficult to immigrate into, and I'm not sure what
| foreign ownership of property is like - I'm guessing unfriendly.
| Someone will likely comment in reply if they know better.
|
| 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.
| 3np wrote:
| 1. Buy property for >= 5 mil JPY
|
| 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.
| csomar wrote:
| 5 mil JPY is not a lot of money if I'm doing the conversion
| right. The question is, how difficult is the Business Manager
| visa to get.
| eloff wrote:
| That's just a visa, not immigration which would require
| permanent residency status.
| aikinai wrote:
| This is one of those factoids people constantly repeat because
| it sounds like it would be true. Japan is far easier to
| immigrate to them most other developed nations, especially the
| US, which most on this site will be comparing to.
|
| Also it's very easy for anyone to buy property.
| tormeh wrote:
| > This is one of those factoids people constantly repeat
| because it sounds like it would be true
|
| 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.
| bluepizza wrote:
| > Preventing immigration (both permanent and temporary) has
| been a political priority in Japan for centuries.
|
| 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.
| _game_of_life wrote:
| I am also surprised but you can check and it does indeed
| seem the majority (90%+) that apply for citizenship every
| year are accepted...
|
| 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.
| _game_of_life wrote:
| Huh, TIL...
|
| 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?
| bluepizza wrote:
| When requesting naturalization, you have to go through
| interviews in Japanese, and send a handwritten letter in
| Japanese as well.
|
| That puts a lot of permanent residents off - why go through
| that when they can already stay indefinitely anyway?
| slim wrote:
| I find this selection process fair and efficient
| novok wrote:
| Sometimes in immigration, what is written down and what is
| reality is two different things. Ex: In panama I've heard
| of legit citizenship applications just rotting on the desk
| for many years.
|
| 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?
|
| https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/7143/
| walrus01 wrote:
| In addition to the points above I have heard that you need
| to pass the Japanese reading/writing/verbal equivalent of a
| TOEFL test with a fairly high score.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| When most people say "immigrate", they are not referring to
| foreign worker status that allows for long term residency,
| but actual naturalization.
|
| 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You probably meant Japanese residents of Korean descent?
| riffraff wrote:
| > When most people say "immigrate", they are not referring
| to foreign worker status that allows for long term
| residency, but actual 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.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| In English at least, "immigration" and "immigrants",
| refer to _permanently_ moving to a new country, not long
| term residency or guest worker programs. I.e. you are
| intending to never return to your original country. If
| you are intending to return, then you are a long term
| resident, but not a permanent resident.
|
| 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."
| sixhobbits wrote:
| This is just playing with grammar. You can live somewhere
| permanently (in the grammar sense) while on a temporary
| permit (in the legal sense) and most people who emigrate
| go through various stages of (legal) temporary permits
| before being granted permanent residence (eg often
| requires 5 years of uninterrupted "temporary" residency)
| or citizenship (often 10-15 years).
| cedilla wrote:
| The majority of migrants don't permanently move to a new
| country. And really, does it make sense to categorize
| people on their unknowable intention?
|
| 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.
| wenc wrote:
| > When most people say "immigrate", they are not referring
| to foreign worker status that allows for long term
| residency, but actual naturalization.
|
| 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)
| cedilla wrote:
| Immigration doesn't imply permanency. Indeed, most
| migrants don't aim for permanent residency.
|
| 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.
| fbcpck wrote:
| > Immigration doesn't imply permanency. Indeed, most
| migrants don't aim for permanent residency.
|
| I believe you're confusing _immigration_ [0] and
| _migration_ [1]. The former aims for permanent residency
| or naturalization, the latter is temporary.
|
| [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immigration
|
| [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/migration
| cedilla wrote:
| I don't. Immigrants and emigrants are the same just seen
| from different perspectives, with migrants describing
| both.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| eloff wrote:
| Immigrate as in obtain permanent residency.
| spookybones wrote:
| Do you know any websites/resources with more info on this?
| [deleted]
| aphextron wrote:
| How's the internet in these towns?
| trhway wrote:
| that reminds about the Finland approach - bunch of years ago i
| read that the government specifically targeted high speed
| internet expansion into rural/remote areas (in particular the
| Baltic sea shores which are beautiful to live on) to provide
| jobs and thus avoid depopulation.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I wonder how this works in the context of the fact that Japanese
| houses, unlike those in the rest of the world, supposedly
| depreciate to $0 in just 25 years.
|
| 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.
| brundolf wrote:
| > The land is seemingly worth nothing and the building itself
| worth zero or really a liability
|
| 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?
| trophycase wrote:
| Lots of houses are liabilities. If you've ever been to a
| place like detroit, where they are abandoned, the roofs are
| half collapsed, there is water damage everywhere, etc. The
| cost to repair is higher than destroying it and building
| something new.
| bhickey wrote:
| https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
| economics/2018/03/15/w...
| ryanSrich wrote:
| https://archive.is/5eFO6
| brundolf wrote:
| Huh, that's fascinating
| gruez wrote:
| first result for "japanese house depreciation":
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-
| reusabl...
|
| >Unlike in other countries, Japanese homes gradually
| depreciate over time, becoming completely valueless within 20
| or 30 years.
| tpmx wrote:
| _This scrap-and-build approach is a quirk of the Japanese
| housing market that can be explained variously by low-
| quality construction to quickly meet demand after the
| second world war, repeated building code revisions to
| improve earthquake resilience and a cycle of poor
| maintenance due to the lack of any incentive to make homes
| marketable for resale._
| masklinn wrote:
| Also high summer humidity which basically gives the
| choice between extensive maintenance requirements (which
| requires that the house was built to allow for it) or...
| just tearing down the house before it's gotten to rot.
|
| 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).
| lazide wrote:
| Some good peer links. There are several ways to value things
|
| - 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.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| well, if they sell the houses for $500, it is because that
| statement is true, over time, they worth nothing because
| nobody wants to live in the country side, what you buy for
| $500 is worth $500
| glandium wrote:
| As siblings have already said, the land is not worth nothing,
| but the article doesn't seem to say, from a quick glance,
| whether property of the land is included in the transaction.
| Because in Japan, land can be rented too (yes, you can rent
| land to build something on top of it, that's called shakuchiken
| (Jie Di Quan )).
| panny wrote:
| Not in every case naturally, but land can also be worth
| nothing in circumstances where it has become unstable. Japan
| has places where old homes exist and new home building is not
| permitted because it has become a hazard zone for landslide.
| No wells can be dug, no foundations, it may trigger a
| collapse which affects your surrounding neighbors.
| Eventually, earthquake will take the place and no one will
| buy in the area with this knowledge.
| 3np wrote:
| It's rare that the land is actually worth nothing, but it can
| be worth less than the loss of liquidity + the cost pf
| demolishing the current house (which you're right on).
| masklinn wrote:
| > The land is seemingly worth nothing and the building itself
| worth zero or really a liability.
|
| 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.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I really wonder how the lending against houses/land works in
| Japan.
|
| 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?
| masklinn wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It's easier to sell land with a building on it that is
| immediately useable. This impacts bank decision making.
|
| 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!
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| My concern would be that if the land is worth ~$0, and
| building worth ~$0, that the bank won't even lend you money
| to build a new building.
| lazide wrote:
| It can actually be even weirder. The land might be worth
| -$money (in some cases like Detroit, tax liens and other
| issues meant the '$1 house' was actually $50k+ because of
| the liens.)
|
| 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.
| tormeh wrote:
| The bank could take collateral in something else than the
| house. But if you have that kind of collateral, you might
| not need a loan in the first place...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| LOL - on a 30 year term, too!
|
| =PMT(0.02/12, 30*12, -500)
|
| $1.85 per month!
| city41 wrote:
| Sounds similar to the one euro homes in Italy. At least according
| to this video, that program seemed pretty successful:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2vtDLTAgM
| siruncledrew wrote:
| I wonder how long of a lasting impression this creates? I've seen
| videos from Japanology on Youtube about rural communities trying
| to come up with incentives and revitalization measures to varying
| success. From an outside perspective, it's commendable to see
| small communities care and try to be creative and "startup-y".
|
| 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.
| visualradio wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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.
| na85 wrote:
| I think the point, though, is that irrespective of the exact
| price in the Rust Belt, prices are a fraction of those in
| desirable places like SF or NYC.
|
| 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.
| visualradio wrote:
| I think the bigger issue is that prices may be extremely
| inflated in both locations, relative to construction cost
| of replacing current improvements with new improvements of
| equal utility, due to national or global real estate credit
| bubbles, which have the power to wreck the economy.
|
| 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.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/house_type/?searchQuer.
| ..
|
| I found some dirt cheap ones.
| visualradio wrote:
| The cheapest listing I see in Iowa City is $25,000 for a
| vacant lot with no building.
|
| edit: This is a good indication of real estate bubble btw.
| walrus01 wrote:
| A while back I did some research related to this, and while I
| wouldn't want to get into the uninhabitable house part of it,
| there do appear to be habitable and in fairly good condition
| 3BD size houses in _very rural_ areas for sale in some small
| midwest towns in the USA for around $40-50k. If you go look
| at some small towns in southern IL and set the zillow max
| price to 50-60k you 'll see them.
|
| 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.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| It would be interesting for the Japanese government to rent some
| of these properties out short term. I'm sure lots of tourists
| would be willing to rent them for short periods of time. Although
| it's a lot of overhead to facilitate, maybe it would allow for
| enough revenue to keep the properties maintained and managed.
| eloff wrote:
| These are not in touristy areas. There would be little to no
| demand. If you want to stay in small town rural nowhere there
| is no reason to go all the way to Japan for that.
| dheera wrote:
| I spent 2 weeks biking around rural Japan, away from touristy
| areas, and it was fantastic, to say the least.
|
| 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.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Unless of course you like Japan.
| masklinn wrote:
| Even if you like japan, unless you like / intend the small-
| time rural farmer aesthetic. Which I don't think most
| people who "like" japan really do.
| janmo wrote:
| I don't think Japan is visited by enough tourists for this to
| work. The article mentions 8.49 million vacant homes.
| Macha wrote:
| There's also the question of if these homes are located near
| where tourists go. If someone's looking to visit Tokyo,
| they're not going to be interested in staying in Wakayama.
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