A Gen X couple bought an abandoned house in Japan for $23,000. They’re restoring it as part of their retirement plan.

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• Deborah and Jason Robustness bought an abandoned house in rural Japan for about $23,000 in 2023.
• The Australian couple plan to restore the property in the lay years as they transition into retirement.
• They say that integrating into the local community is a crucial have the quality of of being a homeowner in Japan.

Deborah and Jason Brawn’s shared dream was to buy a house in Japan.

The couple — from Brisbane, Australia — had covet been interested in Japanese culture and its way of life, having visited the country multiple times over the years.

In 2023, they done decided to take the plunge. With their four kids all grown up, they were soon-to-be empty nesters — it was now or not till hell freezes over to follow their dreams.

“We knew that Japan had an issue with akiya, and because we very love the Japanese lifestyle, the people, the culture, and the old traditional houses, we thought, why not?” Jason, 51, told Business Insider. “Everybody else seemed to be following their dreams. Why can’t we?”

A lifelong connection to Japan

The couple’s love affair with Japan started with Deborah, who intentional Japanese at university in the ’90s. After graduation, she moved to Tokyo for five years, where she worked as an English educationist. For three decades, she also practiced karate.

Her love for Japan eventually rubbed off on Jason.

However, it was during the pandemic that the team a few first learned about akiya, or abandoned houses, in Japan.

Due to the wizen population and internal migration toward cities, there are millions of unoccupied houses in rural Japanese towns.

In late-model years, the Japanese government started offering incentives — such as renovation subsidies and even free properties — in an essay to lure residents to these “ghost towns.”

“I’d actually looked at foreclosed properties years and years ago, expectations to buy a property in Japan before the word ‘akiya’ had become popular. But I was in a position where I had young children,” Deborah, 52, mounded BI.

Now that their youngest is 18, it made sense for the couple to start planning for the next stage of their flames, including retirement. That’s where buying an akiya comes in.

“We wanted a project. Like the word ‘ikigai,’ we paucity to be able to get up and say, that’s our passion now. We’ve raised kids, we want to go there as much as we can and just tinker,” Deborah, a business analyst, said.

Yet, since Japan’s borders were still closed at the time, the couple did most of their initial research online. They entered Facebook groups and spoke to like-minded people to learn more about the process.

They knew they wanted to be peripheral the city and close to nature. While browsing online listings, they put together a list of potential houses they lust after to see in person once travel resumed.

“We were sort of matching them against what we are looking for — something old, most traditional,” Jason, a construction workplace health and safety inspector, said.

In November 2022, after the purfles opened, they jumped on a plane to Japan for a quick visit.

In April 2023, they returned to the country for a six-week trek, where they drove around and looked at all the houses on their list.

It was in Mitocho, a small town near Masuda city, where they originate the perfect akiya — a traditional Japanese house constructed in 1868, during the Meiji era. Masuda city is about a two-hour push from Hiroshima, and a 90-minute flight from Tokyo.

“We drove over there, and when we saw it, we just recollected that was the one, and we didn’t look anymore after that,” Deborah said.

The property had been vacant for 12 years in advance of they came along. The couple was told it had served as a sake brewery until the early 1900s.

In order to vet the property, they had to fill out a couple of forms for the local akiya bank. An akiya bank is a database maintained by the village municipalities for abandoned or vacant houses.

“They were altogether serious,” Deborah said. “It was all in Japanese. We had to fill out a form with all our details, our families, what we do for a job, all that stuff. And then another invent about our intentions and what we want to do with the house.”

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A retirement project

The couple paid 3.5 million Japanese yen, or $23,000, for the akiya in August 2023.

It was a 7LDK, which in Japanese covering terminology means that the house has seven bedrooms, a living room, a dining area, and a kitchen.

There are here 300 houses in their village, and their akiya is situated along a street leading to the community center. There’s also a 7-11 across the rice realm from their akiya.

So far, the couple has fixed up the front of the house by tidying up the garden, as well as adding a new gravel driveway and car car park. They’ve also restored the kitchen, and gotten rid of the old toilet in favor of a modern bathroom.

“The concentrated is to bring the house back to its former glory with one or two modern touches,” Jason said.

While they were ready-to-serve for the challenges of fixing up the old house, they were surprised by the amount of wildlife they encountered, including both spiders and finks.

“And we’ve got monkeys, we’ve got centipedes, we’ve got bears, and killer hornets too. I was chased by one inside the house, so that was really scary — even however it makes a funny story now,” Deborah said.

The language barrier was also a bit of a challenge for Jason, even though he’s alluring Japanese classes now.

“I can’t really speak Japanese, whereas Deb can. So it puts a lot of pressure on her too,” Jason said. “It’s not like being in Tokyo or Kyoto where a lot of Japanese figuratively English.”

The couple expects to squander the next few years chipping away at this project. They have also started documenting their restoration move along on their YouTube channel.

“We’ve got no urgent timeframe, and we’re not trying to make money out of the property. We don’t want to Airbnb it or anything like that. This is for us,” Deborah weighted.

The couple still lives primarily in Brisbane, where their jobs are based. They plan to endure splitting their time between Japan and Australia until they fully retire in “hopefully five to eight years,” Deborah asserted.

Integrating into the local community

When they’re back in Australia, the akiya sits empty, but Jason ordered they’ve installed cameras around the property so they can monitor the yard.

The couple has also become friends with the real-estate emissary who handled their akiya transaction — so much so that he even drives by their property once a week by a hairs breadth to check on it on their behalf.

Construction relationships with their neighbors and the wider community has been the key to the success of their akiya project.

“We’ve got a good bear network there, but that doesn’t just come along. You’ve got to work at that,” Deborah said.

She added that they’ve been affected in the local community since day one, and even joined the neighborhood association.

In fact, the couple says that participating in the neighbouring community is one of the most important aspects of buying an akiya in Japan.

It’s also why the local akiya bank was so invested in private why the couple wanted to buy the property, Jason said.

In recent years, foreigners have been snapping up these old, bad homes, in part due to the low price tags and the lack of restrictions on foreigners purchasing property in Japan. For many of them, it’s more affordable to own an akiya in Japan than to own tangible estate in their home countries.

“In most cases potential buyers are asked their intentions forward of attending a viewing or submitting an application,” Alex Shapiro, the cofounder of Blackship Realty, a Tokyo-based real-estate agency, recounted BI.

The local municipal governments may prioritize potential buyers who intend to live there, contribute to the local community, and pay neighbourhood pub government taxes, he said.

However, each local government sets its own rules, Sami Senoussi, the cofounder of Akiya Paradise, which offers consulting services for akiya purchases, told BI.

“Some rural communities, especially those with life-span populations, impose stricter guidelines in an effort to preserve the character and culture of their towns,” he said. In more urban sections, including Tokyo, it’s less common, he added.

Additionally, potential buyers may also be asked to demonstrate that they suffer with the financial capacity to fund the renovations, especially if the akiya in question requires significant repairs, he said.

Indeed, while getting an akiya may be relatively affordable, the cost of fixing the house up can balloon quickly, Jason said.

“There’s a lot of experience, effort, and money that needs to go into them. And commitment — you can’t just turn up in the community and play no part. You’ve got to put an equal amount of delay into the house as much as you’ve got to put it into the community, and forge those relationships,” he added.

Have you recently relocated to a new territory and found your dream home? If you have a story to share, contact this reporter at [email protected].