Last night NHK’s documentary series A to Z covered the phenomenon of abandoned houses. Based on local government statistics, it’s assumed that there are 100,400 unoccupied houses in Tokyo alone, a 40 percent increase since 1998. The number of abandoned homes in Tokyo increases at a rate of about 3,000 a year. NHK limited its coverage to the mostly residential areas of Setagaya and Suginami Wards, finding “at least” 500 houses that looked to be abandoned, of which they isolated 103 for more detailed study.

Study in this case meant talking to neighbors and local officials about the state of these homes, most of which were in severe states of disrepair, as well as finding out who the owners were and why they weren’t living there or keeping the properites up. Understandably, neighbors were quite concerned, not just with the eyesore aspects–some properties were magnets for refuse and overgrown with weeds and vines–but because they were fire hazards. Abandoned homes are often the targets of arsonists.

Ward officials receive complaints from neighbors about abandoned homes on a daily basis, but legally there is little they can do. It’s a Catch-22 situation: They need permission from the owner of a property before they can set foot on it, and in most cases they cannot locate the owner. In some instances, the owner has died and no heirs can be found; or, as in the case of one woman, a painter who died several years ago, her son was eventually located by NHK and said he had had “no connection” with his mother for many years. One owner of a house in Adachi Ward died with a lot of debt, so it’s assumed that his relatives have not come forward to claim the property because they are afraid they will have to assume that debt along with the property.

However, in some cases the neglect is on purpose. Officials know of some cases where the title of a property was taken over by a relative after the death of the owner or was sold to a third party. These new owners are simply waiting for the value of the plots to increase so that they can sell them for profit, but in the meantime they aren’t maintaining the properties. Of course, the houses in almost all these cases are worth zero, but in any of the 23 wards of Tokyo the land on which they stand could be quite valuable. One property in Setagaya that NHK checked was worth ¥200 million, but no one has seen the owner in at least ten years.

The Democratic Party of Japan has disappointed many of its supporters since coming to power a year-and-a-half ago. Some of the party’s most progressive proposals have either been shelved or abandoned. One of the less discussed promises has to do with chukai tesuryo, or “intermediary fees” that are charged by realtors when they broker a sale of a house by the owner.

In its INDEX 2009 statement of policy, the DPJ pledged to move away from home ownership as the primary housing policy goal and boost rights for renters, whom previous Liberal Democratic Party governments all but ignored. In addition, the DPJ said it would limit realtors to charging intermediary fees to only one of the parties in a housing sale. According to the law, when a previously occupied home is sold, the realtor can charge a fee equal to no more than 3 percent of the price of the house + ¥60,000 + consumption tax. For a ¥25 million house or condo, the fee would be ¥855,000. What bothered the DPJ is that the realtor can charge this fee to both the seller and the buyer, meaning for that ¥25 million home it can clear a cool ¥1,710,000. The party pledged to make it a law that the realtor can only charge this fee to one or the other party but not both. (Note: there are no fees when the realtor itself is selling a house or when the house is new and being sold by a developer.)

As with the pledge to support renters, the promise to control fees remains in limbo, and it’s not clear what exactly the DPJ hopes to bring about by limiting the fee to one party in a home sale. For sure, the extraneous fees that come with buying a home can be intimidating: title registration, bank fees for loans, loan insurance. In the end, a buyer pays anywhere between 5 and 10 percent of the price of the property in fees. In any case, no realtor charges less than the 3 percent ceiling, which means that the whole industry acts like a cartel. There’s no competition, though theoretically there could be. Most properties list with multiple real estate companies, so it’s possible a prospective buyer could play one against the other: Give me a deal on the tesuryo and I’ll work with you instead of the other guy.