My path to Home Ownership – I bought a Cheap House (Akiya) in Japan

I’ve always wanted to be a home-owner and up to this point, I’ve been thwarted by economics. I could never get enough to make a decent offer in the beautiful places I’ve lived – or to qualify for a mortgage with my self-employed hustle lifestyle.  When I finally did manage to get enough money together to buy a shack on the Big Island outright (at the beginning of the pandemic), the government started handing out free money and then rich people saw that inflation was going to eat us all alive – the offers I put in on the Big Island of Hawaii were all outbid with cash offers that I couldn’t top because they were way over the asking price. At that time, the bank approved me for a mortgage, but then unapproved when they realized it meant I would be changing islands and changing jobs. It’s been very frustrating.

This year, I decided I would break the frustration cycle and buy a house. I found a shack that I thought I could afford on the Big Island in early January so I started selling my crypto and stocks to get the offer together. I thought the seller might accept a cash offer that was 10% under his asking price – just about when I had it all together – the bastard raised his asking price by nearly double (it still hasn’t sold). Once again, I was priced out. Worse, I had sold the little bit of Bitcoin I had just in time to miss it nearly doubling in value. If I hadn’t of sold it, I would have been closer to what the seller was now asking.

So – February of 2024 – I found myself holding a bag of US dollars that were rapidly deflating in value and the things I had just sold to get it were rapidly inflating. If I jumped back into those investments, it would essentially mean I was taking a loss for no good reason at all – which feels like what the story of my life has been so far. So, I said forget it. I’m not doing it.

Since I couldn’t buy a house in Hawaii or California or Oregon or Washington – I would look further afield. I looked and seriously considered buying one of the burned out brick homes in Detroit, Michigan for several thousand dollars.

I still haven’t completely ruled this out – but ultimately, I decided I wanted to buy something that wouldn’t involve cleaning out human feces and needles – at least for my first home purchase.

I looked in other ‘cheap’ states and honestly nothing looked any better. I like the idea of Detroit for a variety of reasons – but that time will have to come later, not now. I wasn’t interested in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Arizona or Nevada desert, or other uninhabitable places – although – the toxic waste dump/former resort of Salton Sea does appeal to me in a Mad Max kind of way.

I decided to look even further afield. I don’t know enough about Mexico or anywhere south of Mexico  to consider that yet. A lot of the countries I’ve lived in make it really hard for foreigners to buy a home. I kept seeing stories about Americans buying cheap homes in Italy and that appealed to me but the more I read, the more I realized that the cheap houses in Italy pretty much require a full time commitment to live there year round – and I don’t want to abandon my almost 13-year-old daughter. I want to be close enough that I can get back to Hawaii in a day – and that really limits where I would be looking. West Coast US and Canada, priced out. Mexico, Central and South America – not enough information, and – you probably know where this is going…that left Pacific Rim Asian countries and a handful of Pacific Island nations or territories.

Of course, I decided to focus on Japan. I gave myself a crash course on ‘akiya‘ the abandoned houses of Japan that a declining birth rate and young people’s desire to live in major urban areas have left littering the smaller towns of Japan. At first, I thought I would need to go to Japan, introduce myself to the city administrators, and find out which Akiya were abandoned which would mean that I would need to pick out a town, learn Japanese, and also learn the ins and outs of Japanese real estate.

There had to be a better way. I think I found it. There are a few sites that had sprung up to provide information and assistance to foreigners buying houses in Japan. Most of them were loaded with warnings about what not to do and why buying a house in Japan is a terrible idea for just about anyone who is considering it. Still, I pushed forward – I’ve never been deterred by warnings that an idea is bad. I found a relatively new site that listed a wide range of akiya throughout Japan.

As a new site, the owners of it were keen to find a business model for selling Japanese homes. They had bought an akiya themselves and then built the business around what they were learning. It pays to find new sites like this – for subscribing to their site for $15, I was also given a one hour consultation in which I could pick their brains, ask questions about the houses I was interested in, and see if I had completely lost my mind. I subscribed, set up the appointment, and got on their site to do some shopping.

There are a wide range of akiya priced from about the price of a burned out Detroit brick house to the cost of a decent house here in Hawaii. My budget was VERY limited. I had already decided which part of Japan I wanted to buy a house in – Hokkaido. So I looked at the cheapest houses available in Hokkaido priced up to about $30,000. There were a surprisingly large number to look at. For a variety of reasons, I picked the town of Otaru as where I would focus. The akiya shopping site owners, an American and a Canadian – went through my list with me. They shared what they liked and didn’t like about each one and that process was very helpful. They also told me a great deal about the how and why of akiya and investing in them. The bottom line is – don’t expect to make money, expect to spend money.

The house I liked best was actually on the lower side of my budget and didn’t seem to be in terrible condition. It had some features I really liked and the consultants told me that they liked it as well – but with some reservations. I asked them how we could proceed and they let me know that they didn’t have a business in place to help me buy it yet – they are working on it – but they connected me with the consultant who had helped them to purchase their akiya and guided them through the process. They set up a consultation for me and let me know that if I booked his service, I would get a 10% discount.

At this point, I confess, I had already decided to move forward with the process. There was no talking me out of it. I saw this as an opportunity to finally own a home – at a price I could afford. For those who don’t know, in 2021, I went full NFT and crypto degen. It was a crazy time and there was a lot of money made – and a lot of money lost. Mostly lost. There were times when I paid almost my house’s asking price for jpegs of cartoon characters in 2021 – which was pretty stupid and made spending the same amount to actually buy a piece of land and an abandoned  dwelling in a foreign country sound like the smartest thing I’ve ever done. In crypto, we frequently say ‘don’t invest more than you can afford to lose – and expect to lose’. That’s what I was doing. here – but I was limiting my exposure. The guys pointed out that if I spent more than my budget I could get a nice house that was move in ready (even though you can’t really just move to Japan as a foreigner – but we’ll get to that).

The consultant they connected me with has helped many foreigners buy homes in Japan. Looking at the house I liked and asking me a few questions, just a few minutes into our call he said “This is a terrible idea and you shouldn’t do it.” While I respected his viewpoint, I was already seeing this as a $10,000 education on how to buy a home in Japan.  He was very knowledgable and a very nice guy – I probably should have listened to him and would encourage anyone else to do so if they should hear the same words – but I don’t think he quite understood the nature of a degen like me, nor what was actually driving me. Time will tell if I someday find big regret in my decision to push forward but his response when I asked ‘How can we move forward?” was “I can’t help you with this. If you insist on doing it, I will connect you with a Japanese real estate agent we’ve worked with in the past. She speaks great English and might be willing to assist you.” He didn’t charge me for the advice, the consult, or the introduction – which I thought was damn good of him.

Indeed, the Tokyo realtor he connected me with was willing to assist me. She was building a business to do just this kind of thing though I think she had only had one foreign client before me. As such, her fees were very reasonable. I want to point out that I was clueless about this entire process and while there might be a tiny possibility that I could have done this on my own – I think it more likely I would have thrown up my hands in frustration and moved on. I connected with the Tokyo realtor and booked a flight to Tokyo, a train to Hokkaido, and another train to Otaru. She set up a viewing with the selling agent in Otaru. It wasn’t an ideal time of the year to view the house – but we must play with the hand that we are dealt.

It’s not a huge house by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve paid for it and I am now waiting for the title transfer paperwork. The process has been incredibly educational and there has been a great deal to navigate. I think a fluent Japanese speaker might have been able to navigate it all – but it still would have been challenging as a foreigner. There were times I was asked “Are you sure this wasn’t a big con?” I felt confident that was not the case, but there was always a possibility because navigating a process like this in a foreign country is fraught with risk. My realtor is amazing though – I never doubted her – though the amount of time some things take was sometimes hard to bear.

The house will need a lot of work. how much? I don’t really know. I short-cutted the buying process by doing a simple walk through and foregoing the inspection. I won’t really know much more until all that snow is melted and I’m back at what is now my property.

Owning a home in Japan doesn’t give you the right to live there. I’ve spent enough time in Japan to know that I need to understand Japan much better – so I’ve accepted a job teaching English in Japan for a year. It probably won’t be in Otaru, but that is okay. My adventures continue…