[HN Gopher] Akiya houses: why Japan has nine million empty homes
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Akiya houses: why Japan has nine million empty homes
Author : pseudolus
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-05-01 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related?
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/04/26/japan/society/h...
|
| "The number of homeless people in Japan fell 8.0% as of January
| from a year earlier to 2,820, the lowest level since data began
| in 2003, the health ministry said in a survey report Friday."
| Anon1096 wrote:
| There have been lots of empty homes for a while now, so no, any
| 1 year drop in homelessness rate is unrelated. But the absolute
| number being low could be.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| > Vacant land attracts higher taxes in Japan than land with
| buildings
|
| A hell of an incentive to build or sell your land to someone who
| will build. We've struggled with land speculation in the US for
| longer than we've been a country despite an obvious solution
| being available to fix this. We really could benefit from taxing
| land value alone, regardless of the value of any structures on
| top of it.
| skybrian wrote:
| There are lots of kinds of land. A vacant lot in a subdivision
| is one thing, but what about agricultural land? How about a
| wilderness land trust?
|
| Incentives are a blunt instrument. They necessarily push in the
| wrong direction sometimes, because they're dumb rules. Beware
| one-size-fits-all solutions.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Neither agricultural nor wilderness trust land are counted as
| vacant. There's specific zoning and tax rules in most
| municipalities for them.
|
| Land that is zoned for some form of residential, commercial
| or industrial use but doesn't have building is considered to
| be vacant.
|
| The US doesn't have a shortage of land. However, vacant
| _properties_ (residential or commercial buildings with no
| tenants) are indeed a problem in densely populated regions.
|
| For some areas, it's because the city population shrunk and
| nobody wants to live there (Detroit comes to mind as a semi-
| recent example) but for others it is speculative investors
| who don't want to be a landlord and are just betting the
| price will go up.
| skybrian wrote:
| In urban areas, sometimes they put in a parking lot, which
| I suppose doesn't count as vacant?
| gwern wrote:
| Also a disincentive to _not_ buy land to build on, because now
| you have to pay for the demolition of the dangerous pile of
| rubbish on it pretending to be a house to reduce the tax
| burden.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are similar tax incentives in the US, e.g. homestead
| exemptions. A similar, if not better, effect could probably be
| achieved by adjusting these programs.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is likely something that will happen globally, simply
| because of demographic trends.
|
| Large cities will also be impacted, with a delay, as this is
| where most young and educated people choose to live, for obvious
| reasons.
|
| In my opinion the housing market is the real demographic
| dampener, more than anything else, and it means that the long
| term trend for both demography and housing should be a slow
| oscillation around equilibrium.
| mynameisnoone wrote:
| Everywhere except the SF Bay Area, Santa Cruz, Malibu, Boca
| Raton, and Maui.
|
| I think it's simply a communication and logistics problem to
| match people from other areas to empty homes. If anything,
| Japan and such should explicitly incentivize and encourage
| migration to declining areas to ensure their own tax base.
| ghaff wrote:
| Many young and educated people in a relatively small number of
| cities until they decide to start a family and then
| historically they moved out. One also wonders what affect more
| remote/hybrid work will have. My cohort in the late 80s
| basically didn't live in the city unless that's where their job
| was which it wasn't in the case of the computer industry.
| There's nothing inevitable about young professionals wanting to
| live in cities and certainly not staying there.
| kube-system wrote:
| Remote work is also giving professional workers more leisure
| time, and many are putting more thought into where they live
| as not just a place where they sleep, but also where they
| work and socialize. Also, for the people who prefer living in
| cities, there may be shifts in which cities are desired. Many
| mid-sized cities in the US existed because of the physical
| proximity required for the jobs there.
|
| e.g. In 2001 a worker may have moved to Cincinnati or St
| Louis because they got a job there. In 2024 a remote worker
| might move to NYC or Austin because they want to live in
| those places.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or they might decide NYC is an incredible luxury if they
| don't have a job in finance there.
|
| As I say, we'll have to see how it plays out. Obviously
| fully remote has become a decidedly minority mode
| (especially to the degree people worry their next job won't
| be fully remote) contrary to what some expected during the
| pandemic.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > until they decide to start a family and then historically
| they moved out
|
| That's a mid-to-late-20th century North American pattern
| based on zoning restrictions, mortgage policies, highway
| development policies, and racial conflict. There is nothing
| inevitable about it, and Japan has had a completely different
| experience.
| autoexec wrote:
| > There's nothing inevitable about young professionals
| wanting to live in cities
|
| I think it's more likely than not that young professionals
| with money will want to live in places where they can easily
| access a large variety of quality products, services, and
| entertainment. Places where they can meet and spend time with
| other young professionals. Once they get families they'll
| tend to prioritize places with good schools, childcare, and
| support systems (their parents, doctors, etc) but I don't
| think being able to work from home is going to make people
| want to live too far from cities while they are young.
| ghaff wrote:
| And the fact is that those good schools, for example, are
| in the orbit of some of the more elite cities much of the
| time. SF's geographical constraints I think sometimes
| mislead people into thinking towns near expensive cities
| are all equally expensive.
|
| Many cities that are themselves expensive have suburbs and
| exurbs, some of which are themselves very expensive, but
| others of which are much more moderate and often have
| decent school systems and may be within an hour for medical
| care or an evening's entertainment.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Young people will never be able to afford a home by working,
| no matter how much they produce for the economy. It is
| commonplace now that young people at the workplace produce 5x
| as much as their older colleagues. But they are never
| rewarded for it.
|
| What they will get rewarded for though is getting (somebody)
| pregnant. Then the parents of both the father and mother will
| rush in to help them get real estate and to escape the dead
| end of working.
|
| In short, they can't afford to move out from the city until
| pregnancy opens the doors for them.
| beaeglebeachh wrote:
| Lol this is the myth isn't it.
|
| Reality is getting screamed at by a toddler while you
| single-handedly build a depression era shack in desert
| wasteland for 40k, while simultaneously working full time
| and somehow caring for your kids too. Spend your time
| tearing your hair out, essentially working 3 full-time jobs
| while paying for daycare, rent, and construction materials
| so despite all this work your financials go into a black
| hole.
|
| My parents did send me a $100 Lowes gift card, so there is
| that. At least now I can do ghetto job of pretty much any
| building trade.
|
| It's mostly that having a kid lites the fire under your
| ass, not so much others are helping because they usually
| don't.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| My example is in the cases that young workers get any
| help at all. Some families do it old school and actually
| help their children without requiring pregnancy, but it's
| much rarer. And as you said, many families won't help at
| all.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| >It is commonplace now that young people at the workplace
| produce 5x as much as their older colleagues.
|
| Is this commonplace? This doesn't match my experience, not
| in tech but in finance departments.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| In low margin or high intensity industries, you're not
| going to have anybody who doesn't pull their own weight,
| whether young or old. But for normal jobs, it's more or
| less the norm that a huge number of your long-time
| workers are doing hardly anything at all.
| travem wrote:
| > It is commonplace now that young people at the workplace
| produce 5x as much as their older colleagues.
|
| This does not sound connected to any reality I have seen,
| and seems facially ageist.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Call it what you want. I see it all the time. And not
| many new slacker type jobs are being made, for young
| people to do the same. Every generation probably has the
| same percentage of people who don't do anything. The
| difference is that such a person who is young is a "neet"
| on unemployment, while such a person who is old collects
| a nice paycheck from a job.
| lugu wrote:
| > In my opinion the housing market is the real demographic
| dampener
|
| As simple as it is, I never though of it this way. It makes
| more sense to me than the commonly accepted explanation that
| kids are a liability in modern life. Thanks!
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| It also explains why even in fairer countries with more
| financial support for new parents, such as Norway, are also
| not having kids anymore.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Japan's population decline does seem to suggest that they are
| going to have ridiculously affordable housing for the foreseeable
| future. But most likely a general thermodynamics of disrepair
| over the buildings to come as well.
|
| Don't own property in Japan.
| downrightmike wrote:
| It's the same as everywhere else. People will move to cities
| for work because that's where the jobs will be. So buy there.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Don't own property in Japan.
|
| Maybe don't buy property as an investment, but if someone
| actually wants to live in Japan, finds a nice bit of land, and
| can affordably build a nice place for themself in a small town
| or countryside I doubt the declining population is going to
| make them think twice.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| If the decline becomes severe, areas can become difficult to
| live in. Having schools, transport and shops closing for lack
| of population sucks.
| masklinn wrote:
| Small / detached residential buildings have never really been
| valuable in japan, with exceptions: because of natural
| disasters either you could not expect the building to last that
| long, or by the time you went around to buy it it was not up to
| code anymore and you had to tear it down to build a new one.
|
| Also while Japan's population declines overall, it also
| concentrates in a few metropolises, so rural land becomes
| cheaper, but also ever less attractive. Same with smaller
| cities. Japan is not going to have "ridiculously affordable
| housing for the foreseeable future", because the cheap housing
| is not where people are looking for housing. It's like saying
| that the US has affordable housing because NM has cheap land.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Relative to US cities, housing in Tokyo is generally pretty
| affordable. High end condos in the most hot/central parts of
| the city are still pricy but that's a small percentage of
| available housing stock.
|
| The places a friend of mine who lives in Tokyo has rented
| over the years have all been considerably nicer and sometimes
| larger than what one would get for the same price in SF, LA,
| or NY while still being in walking distance of essentials and
| a short train ride away from any part of the city.
| spike021 wrote:
| It doesn't seem like it went into much detail but while many of
| these end up advertised to foreigners as cheap homes to buy,
| they're not really easy to just live in unless you already live
| and work in Japan. Simply buying an Akiya home and moving to
| Japan won't be sufficient to live there.
|
| Someone with more knowledge than me could probably explain this
| better though.
| timr wrote:
| A lot of the most ridiculous deals you see online _require_
| that you update the building. The whole reason they 're selling
| the thing for pocket lint or the price of a cheap bento or
| whatever is because they don't want it sitting there rotting.
|
| Local municipalities are going to be very skeptical of anyone
| without residence buying such a home.
| aredox wrote:
| Exactly. That's also the deal behind those "1 EUR houses" -
| castles, even ! - that one can buy in Italy or Switzerland.
| Faaak wrote:
| Italy yes, but not Switzerland for sure! Maybe France or
| Spain?
| tstrimple wrote:
| Don't count the Swiss out. Everyone likes building
| castles.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_and_fortres
| ses...
| robocat wrote:
| On 1EUR houses in Italy:
| https://edition.cnn.com/travel/patrica-italy-town-one-
| euro-h...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Sounds much like the situation in Detroit.
|
| I know someone who tried to pull that stunt and bought a
| house in Detroit for just a few thousand dollars. It really
| did not take the city all that long (less than a year for
| sure) to decide he was not going to fix the place up. They
| made him an offer he could not refuse -- give it to the
| Detroit Land Bank for nothin, or go to court.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember browsing real estate sites with friends
| comparing monthly rents in california to outright housing
| purchases in detroit. But the former would have amenities
| while the latter had ... adversities.
| neaden wrote:
| I've always heard that in Japan people don't generally buy a
| house to live in, preferring to knock it down and build a new
| construction. That seems like it would be an important
| contributor since this is more like how many empty lots there
| are.
|
| Edit: Here's an article about it that was posted last year
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36952874
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| They at least used to build houses that they expect to get
| destroyed by natural disasters
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Just because the construction is cheap doesn't mean they're
| prone to falling down. They probably have the strictest
| earthquake codes in the world.
| timr wrote:
| True, but becoming less common as build quality increases.
| Setting aside woo-woo explanations (e.g. "people are afraid of
| ghosts"), the primary driver of this phenomenon was/is that
| older construction isn't up to code, and costs more to bring up
| to code than to knock down and rebuild.
|
| Houses with more intrinsic value -- for example, traditional
| timber-frame homes, or machiya in Kyoto -- have more interest
| for remodelers, even today.
| m463 wrote:
| Although it mentions urban houses, most of them seem to be
| rural.
|
| I can imagine this is significant because japanese cities are
| probably very pleasant to live in, since they are safe and
| people are very self controlled.
|
| (cities in the US for instance, generally have city benefits,
| but on balance require street smarts and caution)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > (cities in the US for instance, generally have city
| benefits, but on balance require street smarts and caution)
|
| In many US cities the crime rate is below what it is in rural
| areas.
|
| As a counterpoint: being non-Japanese and attracting the
| attention of the police goes _very_ poorly. Some Japanese go
| out of their way to try and start trouble with foreigners,
| then claim you assaulted them, and bam, you 're into a
| criminal justice system with a 99% conviction rate and some
| of the worst prison conditions in the developed world.
| Animats wrote:
| The US has about 15 million vacant homes. Look in Zillow for
| towns more than 20 miles from an Interstate.
|
| Also, there's Cleveland.
| neaden wrote:
| US has about 2.7 times more people, so equivalent to 24 million
| houses with US population.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I lived in rural Japan for two years, and there were a number of
| akiya in my town and this was 20 years ago. I wasn't aware
| property taxes are higher on vacant lots but that explains
| things. The akiya I saw were 100% beyond repair, they looked like
| something out of a dystopian movie.
|
| I don't know the motive behind that tax law, but if they reversed
| it I bet a lot of those eyesores would be torn down and replaced
| with a little much needed green space. In my wife's neighborhood
| in suburban Tokyo there were several lots used as mini farms or
| fruit tree orchards. An infinitely better use of the space IMO.
| Klonoar wrote:
| > I wasn't aware property taxes are higher on vacant lots but
| that explains things.
|
| If you look around Tokyo and see the dumbest set up parking lot
| possible, it's often a land owner who's just gotta put
| something there.
| swozey wrote:
| I follow an American car drifter on youtube who moved to Japan in
| '22 and I've been shocked at how affordable his life is. He has
| kids and a wife and they'll go out to dinner and I think his
| usual bill is in the 20-30s for everyone.
|
| He said it's super hard to rent a house as a foreigner there, he
| lucked out and found a landlord that knew him from youtube and
| leased an absolutely beautiful townhouse for $1800 that would be
| well into the $5ks in my city. Glass garage doors, just decked
| out.
|
| Fruit though, he loves to show how expensive the fruit is and
| it's shockingly expensive. Not exact here but we're talking like
| $10-20 for a single melon.
|
| I'm not sure what city he's in, he seems to be IN a city and is
| in Tokyo a lot but I can't remember if he's IN tokyo. So maybe
| it's not Tokyo expensive but I'd always assumed Japan was
| incredibly expensive to live in, in general.
|
| If anyones interested he has a bunch of videos where he talks
| about the move, house tour, etc. He's one of my favorite
| youtubers and I'm not even that into the drift stuff.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQkOPQXPLM
| resolutebat wrote:
| Those $20 melons (and it's not hard to find $100 melons) are
| for gifting purposes. Suburban neighborhoods will have little
| fruit and veg shops (yaoya) that sell all the fruit that's
| _not_ perfect in every way at a steep discount.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Has Japanese culture changed its mind over immigration yet?
|
| World demographics will likely get even worse if war spreads
| globally, including in Asia.
| resolutebat wrote:
| The tide has shifted over bringing in "temporary" workers for
| service industries. Convenience stores, hotels, restaurants etc
| are increasingly staffed by Nepalese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese
| etc.
|
| However, Japan remains very resistant to accepting permanent
| immigration.
| hkmaxpro wrote:
| For comparison, China's vacant home problem is at least 5 times
| Japan's.
|
| China probably has so many vacant homes that even 1.4 billion
| people can't fill, according to an estimate of a former deputy
| head of its National Bureau of Statistics last September [1].
|
| If each vacant home is occupied by a household of 2.76 [2], there
| are about 510 million vacant homes in China. That's 55 times
| Japan's.
|
| But China's population is only about 11 times Japan's. And vacant
| homes only multiply over time [3].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/even-chinas-14-bln-
| popul...
|
| > How many vacant homes are there now? Each expert gives a very
| different number, with the most extreme believing the current
| number of vacant homes are enough for 3 billion people
|
| > That estimate might be a bit much, but 1.4 billion people
| probably can't fill them
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1087871/china-average-
| ho...
|
| > The national average was 2.76 people per household in 2022.
|
| [3] https://www.tbsnews.net/international/empty-houses-hit-
| recor...
|
| See the chart.
| lozenge wrote:
| China's vacant homes are new builds.
|
| "Since the 1980s, China has built enough new housing to re-
| house the entire population but the construction boom has
| become a self-sustaining, perpetual engine of construction for
| the sake of construction - supply with no demand. And there are
| not just miles of empty apartment blocks but entire "ghost
| cities" complete with office towers, hospitals, schools,
| futuristic airports, museums, universities, libraries,
| theaters, sports fields, and miles and miles of apartment
| towers and subdivisions of McMansions - but almost no people.
| (20) Twenty-one percent of China's urban residents, the wealthy
| and middle classes, own two urban apartments, some own three or
| four - all bought for speculation, not to live in, not vacation
| homes. More than 22.4 percent of urban apartments and houses
| remained vacant in 2014. (21) By one estimate, more than 64
| million surplus apartments had been built in China, enough to
| house almost half the population of the United States, yet
| millions more are under construction."
| hkmaxpro wrote:
| So China's new vacant homes are similar to Japan's vacant
| homes built in the 1980's and 90's, but 5 times the scale,
| adjusted for the population.
|
| BTW, you quoted the following article from 2015. The 64
| million surplus apartments number is outdated.
|
| https://truthout.org/articles/china-s-communist-
| capitalist-e...
| xenadu02 wrote:
| A version of those huge stone coins found in some cultures.
| The "owner" of the coin is in name only, it can't really be
| moved. Value is stored via the knowledge of how many exist
| and who owns them.
|
| For China's ghost cities: Each empty apartment has a unique
| address and an owner so I guess that counts as a byzantine
| form of currency too. Maybe the BOC could print "empty
| apartment" bank notes where it maintains the empty apartment
| on your behalf but you can trade the note in for the deed to
| the apartment.
|
| What about stock shares.... eh let's not go there :)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Nevertheless, interest among foreign tourists in experiencing a
| stay in traditional Japanese accommodation is high, with demand
| currently outstripping supply, notes Sakata.
|
| A few years ago I noticed that Universal Studios in Japan, and
| nearby hotels, are cheaper than in LA. (I want to go to Super
| Mario World.)
|
| Unfortunately, flying my family to Japan is super-expensive.
|
| Anyway, this article makes me want to stay in a converted house
| in Japan.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Ok, I'm curious, so I'll ask the dumb question. If I were to buy
| one of these homes, how much of a bureaucratic nightmare would it
| be?
|
| For the record I don't live in Japan and have no viable
| immigration basis. Nor do I have a clue if they have a "no
| foreign property ownership" law like the one Canada just got. I
| do speak rudimentary Japanese and could probably bumble my way
| through the paperwork.
| rgmerk wrote:
| I've seen stories in the Australian media about foreigners
| (Australians and Americans) buying these and restoring them.
| The story was set up by a couple of Americans who've set up a
| business assisting people to do it. Even taking into account
| the fact that they were trying to promote their business, it
| was clear that it's not easy, but with patience it's possible
| to end up with a pretty amazing house incredibly cheap - at
| least by, say, Californian standards.
|
| The thing I found strangest is that some of the houses featured
| were in beach towns not that far from Tokyo. If I were a
| middle-class Japanese family, I'd be buying one of these as a
| weekender.
| lovemenot wrote:
| By coincidence, I visited an Akiya in Nagano yesterday. It's
| not free, but it's very cheap. I will probably buy it (+60%
| likelihood). If so, I will spend additional 200% asking price
| on repairs.
|
| Technically, I am resident in Tokyo but own and live in a house
| in Nagano. It had been empty for 6 years, but not abandoned
| when I bought it 2 years ago. Here is what I know:
|
| - There is no residence requirement to own property in Japan.
| You can be domiciled anywhere.
|
| - Even for a government-sold Akiya, you will pay some
| reasonable fees to realtor and scrivener.
|
| - You probably will not be able to get a loan if domiciled
| overseas.
|
| - Legal is not particularly difficult (compared to other
| countries). I have only done it in person, and cannot imagine
| doing it remotely.
|
| - There is no option to do legal in English. You will need a
| Japanese speaker. Or at least let them explain the documents at
| your level. They will do so sincerely.
|
| - If your akiya includes farmland, you will need to demonstrate
| a plan to farm it. If the plan is not accepted by local govt,
| or you don't fulfill the plan, the sale may be voided.
|
| - It is generally not a scammy environment. ymmv.
|
| Anyone thinking to buy property in Iida, Nagano please look me
| up.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| If you're not Japanese, a lot of things will be a nightmare.
| Japan is _incredibly_ racist and xenophobic.
|
| It also has a criminal justice system that convicts _everyone_
| who ends up in court (being a Japanese judge seems to be easy
| street redefined) and prison conditions are terrible.
|
| Oh, and if you're black, expect to be constantly
| followed/stopped by plainclothes police who will demand your
| identity card, while not identifying themselves.
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