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The story
A poster who bought a run-down vacant house in Saitama Prefecture for ¥2.3 million all-in (fees included) shared photos of its current state — a ceiling stripped bare and a garden gone to forest — sparking a wave of reactions on 5ch. Commenters traded theories over the price breakdown (¥1.7 million for the land, just ¥100,000 for the building) and speculated about why the ceiling boards had been torn out and the paper sliding doors ripped, while the thread turned to the security risks unique to vacant houses and the difficulty of reviving old Japanese homes (*kominka*). The poster decided to buy after wanting a large workspace and growing tired of paying rent for nothing, but now, with no clear path to repairs, regret is creeping in.
What people said
The yard's completely overgrown with weeds and trees, basically a forest at this point — you think if I turned it into a grass lawn someone would buy it?
Well, I am going to live there, but I'm working on some kind of creative project and plan to move out once it's done. The problem is I can't predict whether that project will wrap up soon or drag on for ages, so after agonizing over whether to just stay in my rental or buy a vacant house, I ended up buying one.
About ¥4 million. I still have to pay the remaining ¥2 million purchase cost for the house out of that — I've already paid the ¥300,000 down payment.
I wouldn't want to live there even for free.
Even ¥500,000 seems too much for that.
If it's ¥4 million for this, at least you get big-city-level convenience. Those torn paper sliding doors (shoji) look like signs someone's been sneaking in, too.
I wanted a big workspace. Rent where I currently live is expensive, and I got sick of paying money into something like rent that leaves you with nothing at the end.
But honestly, if my creative project wraps up quickly, I'd have been better off just sticking with rent.
I see. Repairs do look like they'll take a while. Looking closer, it's not just the ceiling — the eaves are caving in too. Might be tough to fix on your own.
There's a decent-sized AEON-type mall (a major Japanese retail chain) about a 5-minute drive away, and two home improvement centers that look pretty big too — that's a plus in my book. The train station's a bit far though, maybe 15-20 minutes by bike.
Sounds like you'd find some seriously legit protective ward talisman (a paper charm meant to keep evil out) instead.
The roof's shot. Something's happened to the tiles and rainwater's getting in through there. I haven't been up on the roof yet though, so I don't actually know what's going on up there.
The listing said something like 'this is priced at land value, so we can't lower it any further.' It's 700 square meters in Saitama.
Did you check the land's assessed value?
Ah, I see, somewhere around Hanno then. Hahaha 🤣 Reviving an old traditional house (kominka) is hard. With that much airflow going through it, it's not just the roof — you've already got ants in there. Ideally you'd tear the house down, clear the lot, and build from the foundation up, but…
I asked GPT and it seemed to say the price was roughly fair, but how do I actually look up the land value?
The assessed value is listed on your property tax documents.
It says the sale price breakdown is:
Total: ¥1.8 million
Land: ¥1.7 million
Building: ¥100,000
A building price of ¥100,000 is shocking — should be zero. If anything they'd want to make it negative.
I was wondering why the shoji were torn like that — did a burglar do this? That's terrifying. What would the point even be?
The ceiling boards were probably stripped out to be sold, and the shoji get torn by whoever wanders into the vacant house. It's been happening for ages — it's basically a pattern of behavior at this point.
If there's a property tax settlement involved, the seller should give it to you as proof, but if not, you'll have to go pick it up yourself once the registration is finalized.
Weeds just grow back… it's genuinely wasted time.
So the ceiling coming down means a contractor stripped it out? And they took one look and decided there was no profit in it? Sounds like this is confirmed very-hard-mode.
They used to sell for ¥2,000-3,000 a panel back in the day. Since it's hard to remove, they probably gave up partway through — so whoever stripped them was either someone vandalizing the house or a trespasser who got inside.
There's a chance someone like that comes back in, so before anything else, you should put up curtains and hang a nameplate. I've heard that in Kansai people still break in even after that, but in the greater Tokyo area that should at least make them think twice.
I'd love to hire you, but I don't have the money.
Well yeah, there was even that TV show 'Extreme Makeover: Before & After' (a Japanese home-renovation program).
Whoa, even a grungy little printed board like that would sell?
It would've looked nice back when it was new, and even plain plywood used to sell. If it's far from the station, the risk of vagrants moving in goes up too.
If you'd looked around more, there were livable places out there — you just drew a bad one this time. Next time, study up before you buy.
Background and Talking Points
In vacant-house transactions, listing the building price as ¥0 is not unusual. A deteriorated wooden house is barely counted as an asset at all, so most of the sale price is determined by the assessed land value (based on the fixed-asset tax valuation). In the thread, the breakdown of ¥1.7 million for the land plus ¥100,000 for the building was cited as the reason there was little room to negotiate the price down. Vacant houses are also especially vulnerable from a security standpoint until someone actually moves in and locks up or puts up a nameplate — torn shoji screens and stripped ceiling boards are often a mix of pre-sale contractor work and traces left by people who wandered in while the house sat empty. Reviving an old Japanese house (*kominka*) looks easy on TV renovation shows, but termite damage and roof deterioration are hard for amateurs to judge, and the repair costs often end up far higher than expected — a detail that’s easy to overlook.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Livegalileo, a “live news/anything goes” board) thread “I Bought a Run-Down Vacant House on a Whim and I Seriously Regret It.”
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