The detail of the house.
- Price ：1.5 million yen.
- Age ：About 50 years old.
- Structure ：Wood made. Two floors.
- Land ：About 200㎡
- Size ：First floor about 70㎡ | Second floor about 30㎡
- Utility ：Water and sewage | City gas
- Location ：Kanto suburbs
You can also see the inside of the house in the video below. This is right after we bought this house.
Tips of Finding Abandoned Houses in Japan.
We found thie house on the website, athome. The tip is to look for a land with old house(古家).
According to our realtor, when people try to sell their houses, they decide the price including the demolishing cost of the house. Because they don’t see any values on the house, they sell is as a land. Still they want to cover the demolishing cost from the sales so the price tends to be decided like that. There are a lot of houses that are still in good condition but on the market as a land. Those are the houses we wanted to buy before they get demolished.
How we found the house.
Let us demonstrate how we found the house. It’s just an example so we do it in Tokyo.
①Go to “Land (土地)” Category.
Then click “Look all the list.(すべての物件を見る)”.
②Filter the price(価格)
The price filters out most of the result, so filter this first. Of course it’s up to your budget. Usually demolishing cost is more or less two million yen. You can add that to your budget.
③Check the image and try to find a house.
Even though those are sold as a land, if there is the house on the land then the image will show it. There is “Old house included(古家あり)” filter, but it’s not that trustworthy. It would be more reliable to check the image with your eyes. It’s time consuming but we believe it’s worth doing it. You can also get the actual address of the land so using Google street view would help too.
④Things to check before inquiring.
We checked things below after finding good houses.
- Hazard Map. (Tsunami, Flood, Landslide etc…)
- The location. (Close enough for the supermarket etc…)
- Neighborhood. (Industrial area, near highway etc…)
You can google “City name Hazard Map” and easily find it. Japan has lots of kinds of disasters so checking hazard maps is very crucial. The UI of hazard map websites is not really sophisticated. You might need to be vary patient for this.
Checking the location and neighborhood in advance will help you to find potential risks when you actually visit the land. Google street helped us a lot to get some ideas about the area.
In our case, we have looked for over 6 months and visited more than 10 houses. The more you visit, the more you get ideas about what’s important for your ideal house. So we strongly recommend you to visit as many places as possible.
So on the next page, we will show you how we contacted the realtors.
