I’m an atheist, ghosts scare me about as much as gods do. I would use the money I spend on rent now to build a geodesic dome house. They are easy to build. Put some solar panels on it and get grid electricity for backup. If there’s a house, there is probably a well on the property already. I have permanent residency in Japan. I don’t care if the neighbors are racist assholes. I don’t interact with my neighbors in Tokyo; I wouldn’t interact with the neighbors there either. Where can I find more houses like this? I want one.
https://www.akiya-mart.com/explore
Let us know if you end up doing something like this, I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested in how it turns out.
Because you have to pay taxes including the very incredibly expensive purchase tax and annual property tax. And you lack a visa.
The Japanese government and culture hates foreigner. Unless you or your parents have Japanese citizenship, you’re going to have a hard time.
My experience as a tourist with Japanese friends…
Foreigners (like me) have a chip on our shoulders. That whole attitude of “Well guess they don’t want my money” isn’t really big there. Outside of Tokyo, foreigners get kicked out of places all the time. Often it’s done politely to avoid embarrassment.
And a foreigner swinging around cash going, “Why can’t I buy this” will quickly get a polite “It is not our way as Japanese”, which really means “fuck off”.
Because Japanese visa will never allow for you to live there
You can get 180 days total per year in two sets of 90 so to live in this house you’d have to:
- live there for 3 months
- leave Japan
- live there for 3 more months
- leave Japan for 6 months and have someone look after your house.
This is no way sustainable not to mention as a tourist you wouldn’t have access to anything that requires full residency which is very complicated.
You can get long term visa like education or business investment or work permit etc but those are really expensive and can be very hard to get.
If you think it’s a good deal, You could’ve bought one in Detroit for $1
Well spank my monkey.
There’s a 4bd, 2bath with 2500sqft for nearing the price of the shed in Ops picture. https://www.zillow.com/detroit-mi/under-10000
That’s a 3.5k shed with no utilities is probably why. Running power, gas and plumbing to that place would cost more than a town of houses.
A lot of homeless people would love for there to be more “sheds” on the market. US citizens just seem to think it’s better to have no home at all, than one that isn’t up to snuff, so they make sure cheap sheds are not up to code.
I highly doubt homeless people would want this home, based largely on location. Getting between there and town would suck…
Yeah squatters are so picky. Not much is better than pavement and fresh air.
You’d die when the next big earthquake or landslide hits that home. Or when Sadako crawls out of your TV
I can fix her.
She’s crawling out of my TV cuz she wants the D.
Someone somewhere just started rifling through their shadman archive.
…Diaper, she wants to change my Diaper ?
With house prices that good, I can’t afford not to die!
That place is either haunted or home to some nature spirits. Either way thwy’ll fuck you up.
So I can live a real-life Studio Ghibli movie!?
Sounds like having roommates
Sounds like a deal then
Honestly seems like a more dignified way to go out than in American Civil War 2: Brain Rot Edition
Don’t buy these old japanese houses, they’re literally made of mud and sticks and have absolutely fuck all for insulation.
Living in nature is all fun and games until you’re expected to expected to sleep in 50 degree weather while your split unit struggles to keep your paper box of a bedroom cool.
Most of the time the closest hospital is like 2-3 hours away on a bus that only comes twice a day, so you better hope you never get in an accident cause the ambulance won’t come for hours and your only other hope is the only other person in neighborhood: your 90 year old neighbor who you’re not sure is even still alive.
Source: lived in one for multiple years.
Wattle and daube is actually pretty insulated for what it is. That said Japanese homes are cold because they’re breezey choosing high air turnover over high insulation value in an attempt to circumvent some of the summer humidity.
Sounds perfect honestly.
Sounds like Totoro. Here’s you 3k I’m in.
for $3k i’d buy it just for the land it sits on. who cares about the house
Right? That’d be a solid investment for someone with enough money to replace/remodel the house
Land in Japan only appreciates in large cities. If you buy it now at 3k it’ll be worth 2k in 30 years.
Nah in 30 years it’ll have a real fuckin nice house on it that’ll bring up the value
If you built a house in Japan now for the cost of 100k the house would be worth 50k in 30 years.
Real estate in Japan appreciates like cars, unless you have an especially rare piece of land, it depreciates over time. It’s a bad investment unless you’re actively getting use out of it.
Part of why there’s so much cheap and abandoned land in Japan, there’s no real estate investment structure outside of land near train stations.
there’s no real estate investment structure outside of land near train stations.
So it’s the way it should be, then.
No real “I’m gonna buy cheap land in fuck-off nowhere and build a fucking theme park or whatever and run ads to make sure some idiots make the long trek out to this miserable tivoli of scams and no options. But then other people get the opportunity to settle close to me and compete by selling almost reasonably priced sustenance, and such. And some years down the line we’ve got a shitty pointless desert town going, one with a defunct theme park about raccoons or some shit.”
The catch is that rural Japan is a a shithole rife with xenophobia, privacy violations, bullying, and problematic neighbors. And that’s for ethnically Japanese people, so it’s be way worse if you were actually a foreigner.
There’s a reason why people in Japan try so hard to move away from rural areas into cities.
What kind of privacy violations? Do the neighbors peek into your windows?
Panty theft, naturally.
We hit the jackpot, boys!
Universal truth I think
Can’t tell if the way small minded bigots stay away from the best parts of every country is a fun coincidence or causal.
I read a while back, a testimony from someone who grew up in small town America and then moved into the city when they were older. They explained that there is a lot of indoctrination against “cityfolk” because it’s largely used as a scapegoat. As city dwellers tend to be more progressive due to their heightened social stimulation, this leads a lot of small-towners to hate the idea of progress
The issues with city people go way beyond just progress.
As others in this thread have said, buying a property in Japan doesn’t extend your Visa or grant you residence in the country. This would be a waste of time if you didn’t already have that lined up. However, there are countries that do. Some have what’s called the Golden Visa program, or Investor/Real Estate Visa program (there are other names, but if you’re doing a search, this should turn up decent results). Here’s a list of some countries that do this, and the minimum amount you need to spend.
Portugal - Golden Visa
Investment - €500,000 or €350,000 for lower population areas, or properties that need to be renovated
Residency benefits - Residency permit for 5 years, with the opportunity to apply for permanent residency after thatSpain - Golden Visa
Investment - €500,000
Residency benefits - Residency permit for 1 year, renewable as long as you own the property, and you can apply for permanent residency after 5 yearsGreece - Golden Visa
Investment - €250,000
Residency benefits - Residency permit for 5 years, renewable as long as you own the property, and you can apply for permanent residency after 7 yearsThailand - Thailand Elite Visa
Investment - THB 1,000,000 (about $30k USD) for a 5 year Visa
Residency benefits - Renewable every 5 years with no residency requirementEcuador - Investor Visa
Investment - $42,500 in real estate
Residency benefits - Grants you permanent residencyMalaysia - Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H)
Investment - RM 1 million (about $240k USD) in real estate
Residency benefits - Grants you a 10 year renewable VisaPhilippines - Special Resident Retiree Visa
Investment - $50k in real estate
Residency benefits - Grants you permanent residencyWhen I was looking into bailing on the US, I made a Libre Office spreadsheet with like 70 countries and all this info plus a bunch of other personal requirements for what I was looking for, so some of it may be outdated. Hell, some of it may be straight up incorrect, so feel free to double check it.
That’s… shockingly affordable if you already have equity in some real estate
Portugal doesn’t have a property based golden ticket visa as of October 2023 due to concerns that it was affecting real estate prices in cities like Lisbon and Porto. But you can still donate 250K euro in cash or invest 500K euro in a local business that leads to job creation (among a couple other investment options). Another option for Portugal is the D7 visa, which requires you to live in the country 6 months the year for 5 years, but requires foreign income of 10K euro per year. Either way, after 5 years, you’re eligible to apply for citizenship.
Thanks for the info! I was unaware of the Spain and Portugal options, so looked it up.
Spain ended their program in January, with application deadline April 3.
Potugal ended their real estate version, but still has investment options.
Yeah I figured things would be changing soon.
I’d have to be near retirement age while still nimble enough to renovate it and hope my pension and savings would be enough to cover the costs.
Even then, it would be difficult to navigate renovations in that environment where you don’t speak the language, have no idea how their houses are supposed to be built, waste disposal and the myriad of other issues that will surely arise.
Getting a job is going to be a bitch - thus the retirement age requirement.
Getting citizenship is going to be an even bigger a bitch.
I’d be an outcast cause of my skin color and inability to communicate.You can actually do this in most countries. Public Auctions of homes are for when people don’t pay land taxes so the local auditors repossess them and sell them dirt cheap to cover the amount due.
You certainly can’t buy a home in Germany that’s anywhere close to as cheap as the one in japan. Maybe there are some very remote plots of land with a ruin of a house on it, but those will still cost more than 4000€.
Public auctions around my area usually start at around 150k or more, so it’s just not worth it for me.
I don’t speak enough Deutsch to navigate their websites for specific examples, but home foreclosures in Germany increased 9% yoy in January 2025, but you’re also correct that property prices are quite high which is the primary contributor to rise in foreclosures.
It’s definitely highly desirable property given the chaos in the USA, the East, etc.
I could feasibly make $4k pretty quickly, I want my own home, and I’ve always wanted to visit Japan… 🤔
なぜだめなのw
