Find out what it’s like to buy real estate in Japan
Just over a year after we sold our house in the USA, we did something… unexpected. We bought an apartment… in Japan! Why? How did we make it happen? What did we choose… and how much did it cost? Let’s find out.
Come tour our home in Japan: Watch the video
The Japanese real estate market now has one less akiya, or unoccupied property, to choose from.
And when our family travels to Japan, we don’t have to hunt for vacation rentals that offer enough room for a family. We can simply… go home.
How did we make it happen?
What did we choose?
How much did it cost?
And why in the world did we buy what we bought, given what we learned about it?
Watch the video to find out!
More about how we found and bought our Japanese apartment
If the condo is our destination, first let’s talk through the journey of how this all came to be. We’ve got a previous video that details how we got to this point in our Japan home hunting adventure, so be sure to check out that video too if you haven’t already.
Understanding broad strokes of what you want before you start looking
When looking for real estate anywhere, it helps to have a decent idea of the area you’d like to be in, and Japan is no exception.
For example, we knew that we were the most interested in the Osaka area, but why?
- Osaka’s more outgoing, friendly culture is a better fit for our personalities
- Local food culture is phenomenal
- Osaka has its own international airport (in fact, as I work on this, we’re just a couple of hours away from taking the nearby train to the airport to fly to Malaysia)
- Less hustle, bustle, and sprawl than Tokyo
- Central Honshu location makes it easy to head to other major Japan destinations, including Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and the southern main island of Kyushu (fave for us, since as One Piece fans we love to visit Kumamoto)
Home hunting and buying
Japan’s real estate market is very different from what we are accustomed to in the USA. There’s no one database to show pretty much every property, no bank of public records that sites like Zillow and RedFin pull from.
Looking for real estate in Japan is much more of a place-to-place hunt, on often older looking websites, in Japanese.
Japan is also full of unoccupied properties, known as akiya. This term often gets associated with abandoned houses, especially in the countryside. In general, an akiya is any Japanese property that someone owns but no one is using or living in.
More sites and services are cropping up that are making it easier to sift through the real estate market. A subscription to Akiya Mart helped us filter and save properties. On the Japanese real estate sites themselves, modern web browsers do a good job overall of translating text from Japanese to English.
We worked with a consultant who connected us with a real estate agent, not to mention a local contractor. The contractor became one of our best contacts: He not only gave us a lift to visit listings, but after we chose our property, he installed our heating and air conditioning system.
We only visited 2 properties
Heading to open houses every weekend? Nope. Setting up lots of showings? No way.
We did lots of research and learning while we were away from Japan. Once we came back, we agreed that if we found something that worked, we were going for it. If we didn’t, then we’d try again next time we were in the country.
We weren’t going to open houses every weekend or setting up loads of viewings.
In the end, while we had interest in various places in the Osaka area, we only visited 2 properties.
Our search honed in on 2 condos, one in southern Osaka, and one more to the north, toward Kobe.
Making the offer
After we made our choice, we coordinated with our agent to make an offer. Unless there’s a major issue with a property, there’s not typically a whole lot of price negotiation on real estate in Japan.
The seller accepted our offer, we transferred a deposit, and then we all had about a three-week waiting period before everything was signed and we had keys in hand.
What we ended up with
We were considering two akiya: a condo near Kobe, or a condo in southern Osaka. Which did we choose?
Both were what Japanese real estate calls a 3LDK. That means the unit has three bedrooms, a living area and a dining area (sometimes separate, but usually one larger space), and kitchen. Each also had a toilet room, shower/bathing room, washroom room with vanity, and even a balcony.
The Kobe listing was more expensive. We liked the overall northern location near major train lines, the northern end of Osaka Bay, and even the baseball stadium where the Hanshin Tigers play.
The southern Osaka listing was cheaper, closer to the airport, and surrounded by lots of great amenities and neighborhoods.
One property would need a lot of work before we could even consider moving in. The other had incredible natural light, and had so much recent renovation, the only thing we had to do to move in was have a ductless, or mini-split, heating and air conditioning system installed.
Which did we choose?
The condo in southern Osaka was quickly an akiya no more!
We got keys a few days before our time at a vacation rental ended. Thanks to some prep prior to settlement, our contractor installed our ductless units right away.
It took some hustle, a major excursion to a home furnishings store, and a taxi full of futons and pillows, but the same day we left our rental, we moved in for our very first night in our home in Japan.
How much was our home in Japan?
Our southern Osaka condo was about ¥4.5 million, or at the time of purchase, about US$33,000.
The Kobe condo would’ve cost about US$55,000. Not only did it have a higher sticker price. It needed a lot of renovation and updating before we could move in, so the total cost just to get into the unit would’ve been much higher.
How typical is this sort of price for Japanese real estate?
If you’re familiar with American, Canadian, British, or Australian real estate, your eyes are probably as wide as ours were when we began property hunting in Japan.
Like many things in Japan, there’s pretty much no top end on what a property can cost. A similar condo in central Tokyo, for example, could easily be over US$3,000,000.
Japan also has properties that cost only a couple of thousand dollars. Abandoned properties might even be free, or just about free, but of course, that’s going to come with a lot of caveats… not to mention the time and money cost of renovations.
Why was our condo less than others?
Combined with the recent, move-in ready renovations, the cost of our condo was an incredible value. It cost much less than similar properties in the general Osaka area. But why is that?
In Japanese real estate, you can buy properties that are freehold. Freehold means you also get the land the property is on, or in the case of a condo, essentially a fraction of the land calculated out based on the size of the parcel, number and size of the units, and other factors.
Or, there is what’s called leasehold property. In a leasehold, the land is owned by another entity, and the building or unit owners pay a monthly fee for use of the land. This model is common in many other countries, such as Thailand.
And that’s why our condo cost less. We went with a leasehold.
The terms of the lease are for about 20 years. When we ran the numbers to compare the Kobe condo’s higher purchase price and the southern Osaka condo’s leasehold, they both cost about the same. Over 20 years, the leasehold could cost us slightly more. However, once we factored in the potential cost of renovations for the Kobe condo, the numbers were better with the leasehold.
If real estate is an investment, doesn’t that make the condo a bad investment?
Honestly, no. We don’t view real estate like this as an investment.
We didn’t get the condo because of potential resale value in the future.
We got it for a similar reason as we got our popup camper or our motorhome: It improves our lives and helps us have the experiences we seek as a family. The value it provides is quality of life and making memories for our family.
Another reason we chose the cheaper condo does have to do with investing: The money we didn’t have to spend on the condo? We put that into our long-term investments. So maybe you could say the condo is a good investment, because we could invest the money we didn’t need for the purchase.
What now?
Now, we are enjoying our condo! We hustled for about the first two weeks to get everything set up. Since then, we’ve been enjoying our home in Japan, not to mention the awesome surrounding neighborhood and attractions.
Can we stay in Japan full time?
Nope, we can’t stay in Japan full time. But we don’t have to. We love visiting Japan as much as we can. Only now, instead of having to find a vacation rental or hotel, when we arrive in Japan, we can just go home.
What questions do you have about our experience, or about real estate in Japan in general? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll answer them in an upcoming video!
Thanks for following our journey to find our home in Japan. See you next time!
Resources we found useful
Want to buy a place of your own in Japan? Here are resources we’ve found helpful:
- Nippon Trading International – great podcast and hosts of the Japan Real Estate Summit
- Nippon Bridge – business and relocation
- Akiya-Mart – listings and filters in English
Full series: Watch these videos to follow our Japan real estate journey
$33K vs $55K Osaka Apartments — Which Would You Buy?
$33,000 JAPAN APARTMENT: What did it get us?
Japan real estate FAQ: You Asked, We Answered: The Truth About Buying Property in Japan
