It’s nice to have a Japan home base where you can leave all your things and not be required to keep bringing things over in your luggage. Not worrying about hotel is also nice.
Each visit to our home, we are meeting more of our neighbors. Our last visit in May, We found one of our neighbors speak English and was introduced to the head of the neighborhood.
Thank you Tim, it looks like we are very very similar in our lifestyles.
The reason I bought the property was exactly that, to have a permanent base, be able to leave my things, keep our bicycles there, make house improvement and even start doing some gardening as my house back in England only has a small patio.
It made total sense for us because we have been visiting Japan 2-3 times a year recently and renting AirBnb's each time was just getting tiring and also finically adding up, especially during longer stays.
It is just a completely different feeling coming back to your own property as opposed to yet another AirBnb.
I am now in regular contact with all my immediate neighbours during my visits, some more, some less but I try to stay engaged. I am spending a lot of time each morning on my own studying Japanese, it's taking me a long time, I think that is because the structure of the language is so different from Polish and English, and perhaps my age of ripe 50 also plays a small part.
And there is another reason I wanted to purchase a property in Japan - as we are very slowly approaching retirement, I can see it as a permanent long term holidays place once we retire too, we will have even more time to visit and enjoy the place.
Hi Tim,
What kind of place did you buy and where if you don't mind me asking? I've made "bought" 2 places so far around the Osaka and Kyoto area only to have them fall through because the owners changed their minds. I got money stuck in yen sitting with the real estate/escrow agent and debating whether to keep trying to buy good value 'turn-key' places or just buy a true akiya out in the country to tear down and build a new place. Thoughts from you and John is greatly appreciated.
Hey CaptainCanuck,
My 2 cents below — hopefully Tim will chime in with his experiences too. The forum is still new and small, so it'll take a few months to grow a community of people like us helping each other, but this is exactly the kind of thread I hoped for.
May I ask your budget? I'm more of a budget shopper — when I was looking, my max was 5 million yen, and even that was a stretch for me back in 2025. Yours sounds higher if a tear-down and rebuild is on the table, unless you plan to do most of the work yourself.
On sellers backing out — I know it feels like bad luck, but from what I understand it's actually how the system works here: until the formal sales contract (売買契約) is signed and the deposit paid, nothing is binding, and akiya owners (often elderly, or families with mixed feelings about the old home) change their minds quite often. After signing, a seller can only cancel by paying back double the deposit. So the practical lesson seems to be: once you've agreed, push to get to contract quickly.
As for which way to go, I think it depends on your plans. Is it purely a vacation base like mine, or do you also want to rent it out to recover costs? If renting matters, be careful — big changes this year. In June the Tourism Agency said municipalities can now cap minpaku operating days at effectively zero in residential areas, and Osaka specifically suspended all new special-zone minpaku applications in May (that special zone was the main way around the 180-day cap). So the short-term rental maths around Osaka just got worse, and location + local rules now matter more than ever.
One more thing if you're considering the "buy cheap akiya, tear down, build new" route: check the plot can legally be rebuilt on. A lot of cheap rural akiya are 再建築不可 (no rebuilding allowed — usually due to road access rules), which makes them fine to renovate but a trap for demolition plans. Worth verifying on every property before anything else.
If it's a lifestyle decision like in my case, rather than an investment, then I'd say it matters less *where* and more how you feel about countryside vs city. Just make sure the area isn't in imminent danger of emptying out — some rural spots I viewed were amazing but had few facilities left, and a car would have been essential !
My budget is up to 15M yen but given how much the currency is cratering, could go up to 20M yen while costing me exactly the same. I'm expecting to pay the same amount of the house cost in renos ie. buy 10M yen house, spend 10M yen for upgrades like insulation, new floors, new roof, etc
I'll be purely using the house as a vacation house. I remember reading somewhere to bypass the "no teardown", you just need to keep the 'bones' ie. the frame of the house intact and build around it but who knows.
I don't care between country or city, just as long as it is near a subway station since getting a car there isn't allowed as a tourist. As for having others around, it be great to have neighbors but it wouldn't supersede having a place big enough to stay in and perhaps a small yard.
First about the car, yes, I am in the same boat. Not that I would want one as it makes no sense to take on such an ongoing commitment , insurance, maintenance etc., even if it was possible. Curiously, I saw one YouTube video (I forgot the channel name) where someone managed to buy a car as a visitor but even they said they were lucky and the dealership went out of their way to help make it happen. I think they were an Australian or New Zealend couple but I forgot the channel name.
I actually really enjoy cycling around town in the eclectic bike, it is a lot of fun, more fun than driving around, and I normally use the narrow residential streets which makes it even more enjoyable. Occasional car rentals just make more sense to me rather than trying to find an angle to keep a car permanently parked at the house.
Now for your "keep-the-bones theory" — I actually googled, AI-ed and fact checked it because I'd heard the same thing. Turns out the rules changed very recently (April 2025) and a lot of what you read online is still describing the old rules.
Here is the verbatim fact check result, I quote:
"What changed: Japan revised the Building Standards Act in April 2025 and shrank something called the "Type 4 exemption" (4号特例). Under the old rules, 2-storey wooden houses didn't need building confirmation for major renovations — which is exactly why people could do full skeleton renovations on rebuild-restricted (再建築不可) properties while keeping the frame. Since April 2025, a 2-storey wooden house needs building confirmation for any "large-scale repair" — defined as replacing more than half of any principal structural element (walls, columns, floors, beams, roof, stairs). And here's the catch: confirmation requires the property to comply with current law, including the road-access requirement — which a 再建築不可 plot by definition fails. So the application generally can't be approved, which makes big structural renos on 2-storey rebuild-restricted houses effectively impossible now, legally at least.
What still works: smaller works below that "half of a structural element" line need no confirmation — kitchens, bathrooms, wallpaper, flooring, partial repairs. And single-storey houses under 200m² kept their exemption, so a 1-storey 再建築不可 house can still be renovated substantially. Some plots can also be rescued through an exception approval process (Building Standards Act Art. 43), but that's case-by-case with the municipality."
So for your plan, the practical takeaway: if a cheap place is cheap because it's 再建築不可, assume you can neither rebuild NOR gut-renovate it if it's 2 storeys — and verify anything in this area with a local architect or the municipal building office BEFORE money moves, because rules vary by municipality and forums (including this one!) are not the final word. Honestly, given your budget, I'd be looking at properties without that restriction at all — the discount isn't worth the handcuffs anymore !!
Can I ask — how often are you planning to be over, and for how long at a time? I ask because it genuinely changes the answer: a house you visit twice a year wants to be as close to turn-key as possible (managing a renovation from Canada is a project in itself!), whereas if you'll be there for longer stretches like me at the moment, a project house becomes much more realistic.
Hopefully more people reading this in the future can chime in their advise.
Don't let my handle name fool you, I am only 'Canadian' on paper as of 2024. I left Canada fully as of last year and spend most of my time in Thailand where I have a house. I reckon I'd spend maybe a total of a couple months in Japan a year. You are probably right about getting a place without restrictions thus I'll start looking again come the fall/winter (low season for real estate in Japan?) for a place that is structurally good on the outside but needs work on the inside since I'll be upgrading the place anyways.
At a couple months a year, and dealing with it all from Thailand, I'd go structurally-sound-outside and just do the inside. If it was me. And couple a months per year is decent enough chunk of time to make the purchase meaningful and actually use the property. Any less time than that and I'd question if its worth it.
Interior stuff you can chip away at each visit like I do , or hand to one contractor. It's the frame and roof jobs that turn into a nightmare when you're managing from abroad.
On season, you're roughly right. Spring (Feb–April, before the fiscal year turns over) is the busy competitive time, and it goes quieter later in the year, so autumn/winter you get less competition. Though honestly with akiya it's less about season and more about when the right place actually shows up — the good ones are one-offs, so better to have your budget and paperwork ready to move fast whenever one appears than to wait for a "good time" !
Anyway good luck with it — and do come back and post when you find somewhere, I'd genuinely like to hear how it goes.
We bought a house in Honjo City, Saitama. We lucked out being 3mins walk distance from a Mega Donki and McDonald’s (my 12yr old son likes that lol). And other shopping malls/hardware store nearby. We wanted to be within decent distance to main Tokyo areas (around 1.5hrs) and 10mins walk to the train station. Since you have a higher budget, I recommend you buy a house in newer decent/good condition outside and an inside layout that is good and bathroom/kitchen that is good condition. If you’re ok with doing painting and minor interior work my John, then I’d say that would be good and will save u money. Try to avoid houses that require new roof etc as that can be very time/money consuming... like in John’s YouTube Videos. Too bad John is too far from our home. Otherwise I would visit him. Lol
Ha, the roof line made me lough, well at least it will last a lifetime now. Honjo sounds like a great spot, 1.5hrs to Tokyo and walkable to everything is a solid base. Of course you'd be very welcome anytime, Kyushu's just a bit of a trek from Saitama but if you are seriously in the area, drop me a line with some notice to see if I am there as well and then you can visit! It would really be great to meet other people doing the same — I've actually connected with a couple of people through the channel already.
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