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The story
Against a backdrop of population decline and a growing number of vacant homes, an article asking “Is buying a house an asset — or a liability?” became a hot topic on 5ch. The discussion was sparked by a news article presenting Horiemon’s personal view, drawing a flood of replies from both homeowners and renters. The debate ranged widely: the reality that rental screening gets tougher as you age, the burden of condo maintenance fees and repair reserve funds, cases where a family home back in the countryside can’t find a buyer, and the point that owning property in central Tokyo can work as an inheritance tax strategy. Rather than a simple either-or, many commenters argued that what pays off depends on age, location, and family situation.
October 17, 2026, 6:00 AM
“Rent is money down the drain. Buy a house and you keep an asset” — it’s a line you still hear all the time as a reason to buy a home. But with the population shrinking and vacant homes piling up, there are cases where the house you bought isn’t an “asset” at all — it becomes a “liability property” you can’t even sell. So where did the assumption that “of course you buy a house” actually come from?
The dream home. Japanese people have long been conditioned to see owning a house as a life goal. Even as times change, that dream still lives on in many people’s minds. In truth, it was the government and industry that planted it there — a well-crafted piece of propaganda built up over half a century.
Source: news.livedoor.com / Original article here
What people said
Whether you end up in a nursing home at the end has nothing to do with owning or renting lol
There's no concept of living in a town you love, in a house you like, decorating it with things you love, with someone you love, raising kids you adore.
The scale that matters in life isn't money — it's whether you're happy and doing what you like.
>living in a town you love, in a house you like, decorating it with things you love, with someone you love, raising kids you adore
You can do that whether you own or rent though
But the maintenance fees and repair reserve fund alone run you 50,000 yen a month
You're only living there till you die anyway, so just skip out on the payments ("bucchi" — stiffing the bill)
If I were a landlord, I wouldn't rent to elderly tenants — leaving the unit empty is less risky.
If family, relatives, or friends drop by occasionally, it's probably fine.
The real problem is the pattern where someone dies alone ("kodokushi") and isn't found for months.
Isn't renting till you die the harder path? The thought of paying rent on top of your pension is terrifying.
When you think about living on a pension in old age, you just have to adapt your lifestyle to match.
The big mansions and vacation homes that were popular at the height of the bubble era are now being sold off cheap.
The people who made money during the bubble are now old themselves.
In old age, you can't keep shuttling back and forth between a vacation home and your main residence.
Even if you have the money, staying at a local hotel beats owning a vacation home.
In old age, what matters is being near a train station, a general hospital, and a supermarket.
Everything should be planned with old age in mind.
Buy a house with your retirement payout. Back in my hometown, a detached house goes for about 10 million yen. Once you've quit work and school districts don't matter for your kids anymore, that's plenty.
I think public housing is the last resort.
But landlords are aging and dwindling too — a lot of them would rather quit the rental business than deal with that.
Most of them are stable family assets being run by sons or grandsons though
If they really can't rent anywhere, won't the city help find them a place? Surely they won't just leave elderly people homeless.
Man…
What am I gonna do…
If it's in a bad area, it's over. If you're buying property in the countryside, at least go for somewhere near a station in the prefectural capital.
Even if the exterior walls are falling apart or the roof leaks, you can still live there if all you need is a place to live
It's better to change where and how big a place you live in depending on your life stage. Betting everything on a single multi-million-yen asset is way too risky.
This guy can write off his rent as a business expense, so none of this is relevant to ordinary people
This is exactly the type of person who'll end up in a danchi (public housing block) when they're old
What's wrong with a danchi? The second floor of a detached house becomes completely dead space once you're old anyway.
Just build a single-story house then. Unless you don't even have enough land for that, in which case fair enough.
Danchi built back in the Showa era are a pain to live in — low ceilings, hot in summer, sometimes there's no drain where you're supposed to put the washing machine. Newer ones probably don't have those issues though.
Flooding, huh? That's on you for building there without checking the risk beforehand.
It's a risky product where you can't change the location or the size. And your kids are going to move out after like 20 years anyway.
Background and key points of this debate
Behind the “should you buy a house” debate lies the increase in vacant homes due to population decline, along with the real-world tightening of rental screening for elderly applicants based on age. There are documented cases of single elderly renters being turned down over concerns about guarantors and income stability, and the thread split between an optimistic view — “once vacancies pile up, it’ll be easier for seniors to rent” — and the counterargument that “no one knows when that future will actually arrive.” It’s also easy to overlook how much the asset value of home ownership varies by region: central Tokyo properties are advantageous as an inheritance tax strategy, while in rural areas more homes are turning into unsellable “liability properties.” Some pointed out that Horiemon himself can run his housing costs through his company as a business expense, which puts him in a different position from the average salaried worker’s household finances. This article excerpts the main arguments from both sides of the debate, with that difference in perspective in mind.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Geisoku Hodo+) thread ““Owning” vs. “Renting” — which is better in the end? Horiemon’s answer.”
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