We’ve written about Yusuke Yoshikawa, a YouTuber who covers what he calls “genkai new towns,” which are difficult to describe, but anyone who has followed our blog for any extended amount of time should be familiar with the concept. Essentially, Yoshikawa seeks out derelict housing developments, mainly in Chiba Prefecture where he lives (and where we live, too). He makes videos of these subdivisions, which contain not only abandoned houses, but plots of land that have never had anything built on them and thus are usually overgrown with vegetation because the people who own them have given up on whatever plans they had for the land. According to Yoshikawa, most of these plots were bought for investment purposes during or shortly after the bubble period of the late 80s and early 90s. His well researched and very funny videos have garnered him enough followers to allow him to make a living off this pastime, and he has recently been in demand as a paid speaker and published a book that is selling well. He’s a self-made success, but not in material terms. As he has pointed out, he himself lives in one of these genkai new towns, somewhere past Narita, because he could no longer afford to live in Tokyo, where he was a cab driver. In a sense, he’s stuck where he is but says he nevertheless can blog from a unique perspective about the state of Japanese real estate. He’s the most honest, clear-headed critic in the field, and he’s totally a layman. 

On Dec. 6, Asahi Shimbun ran an interview with Yoshikawa conducted at his home. The interviewer sounds a bit naive about Japan’s property situation, but maybe he’s just taking the role of the average reader. In any case, if we were doing the interviewing (and we hope to someday) we’d have more pointed questions, but this will do for now and, we hope, steer more people to Yoshikawa’s blog.

As the reporter points out in the introduction, Yoshikawa lives on the edge of the Tokyo metropolitan are, meaning a place where you can sense the population dropping off and nature taking over places where people were supposed to be living. He notes “land that was prepared for residences” but which contain “no buildings.” Infrastructure is either non-existent or “in very bad condition.” He hopes these descriptions help the reader gain a better understanding of Yoshikawa’s term, genkai new town, which has entered the vocabulary thanks to the internet. When he meets Yoshikawa at his home in one of these developments, he remarks how lonely it is. The paved streets and retaining walls make it clear that this area was prepared for residences, but there are no people. 

Yoshikawa explains that the area was developed “several decades ago” but for the most part very few people built houses on the land they bought. The interviewer mentions very old signs with the names of real estate companies that, presumably, are trying to sell particular plots, and Yoshikawa responds that in most of these cases the seller has given up and doesn’t even come to keep the plot tidy. These developments are what he calls “small scale new towns,” new towns being, in the public’s mind, large residential projects carried out with the help of public entities to develop tracts of land. Most of the more well-known new towns were built in the 60s and 70s, but these small scale new towns were built by developers as subdivisions of land that was no longer being used for agriculture, mainly during the bubble period, when real estate values skyrocketed and commercial entities were convinced that people who couldn’t afford homes in the major cities would flock to the outskirts of suburbia to live. These companies were overzealous and so were the small-time investors who bought plots in the belief that they could sell them later for more money. At some point, however, there were just too many small scale developments being built and the whole endeavor just collapsed. 

He goes on to explain how he was living in Tokyo’s Koto Ward in 2017 and having a tough time making ends meet because the cost of living kept rising. Both he and his wife worked, but they had no savings or assets and assumed if they remained in Tokyo they would just be living hand-to-mouth in small rental properties for the rest of their lives. So they looked for a place to buy that they could afford and this derelict property was the closest thing they could find. Though the development has 64 lots, only 7 contain houses.

At first, Yoshikawa started blogging about the housing development “for my own amusement.” He just thought it was funny that the development was so empty and forlorn—Why was it like this? So he started doing research and asking questions, and soon attracted a following, but at first most of his followers wanted advice. Many themselves owned derelict land and, presuming that Yoshikawa was some kind of expert, asked him for tips on how to unload their properties. Though it wasn’t his purpose, he tried to oblige and studied the situation of unwanted land in earnest, starting at the local justice ministry branch office where he looked at land registration lists and at city hall where he lstudied public records related to land development. He also dug up old newspaper ads and flyers for  real estate companies. In the end, he determined that the derelict housing developments in northern Chiba were mostly developed for the purpose of attracting investors and not necessarily people who wanted to live there. He cites as an example a flyer that advertised land “that will surely increase in value because it is a future bedroom community.” The copy was obviously created to attract investors who lived in Tokyo and had no intention of moving. Those who took the bait would later learn that these developments were 90 minutes by train, one way, to central Tokyo, and thus were practically unsellable for the purposes touted by the ads. Moreover, when the developments were made the nearest train stations were only accessible by car and there were no convenient retail areas. In the end, the plots became liabilities, because hardly anyone wants to live that far from where they work. 

In the meantime, these developments became even more undesirable because the few people who did live there started to dwindle in number. Public schools were forced to consolidate because enrollment kept dropping. When the interviewer mentions that, nevertheless, some people did build houses here, Yoshikawa explains that after the bubble burst, most of them couldn’t keep up payments, which were extremely high in the first place because land was artificially expensive, and then their variable interest rates went up. Banks foreclosed on their loans and then couldn’t sell the houses and land even through auction. He says you can find these sorts of abandoned houses all over northern Chiba Prefecture. The problem, he points out, is that people who own these houses or plots think in conventional terms. Maybe they bought their land for ¥5 million, and so they ask for ¥500,000, thinking it will be easy to get rid of. But at the moment, the market situation is such that the person will be lucky if they can even get ¥50,000 for the plot. What most people understand about real estate prices just doesn’t apply in a place like this, and Yoshikawa blames that on the media, which only talks about Tokyo property values whenever they report on real estate. Since Tokyo prices are always high, people can’t imagine what they’re like on the margins of the suburbs. 

It’s gotten to the point where people are literally giving away land. Yoshikawa has actually seen ads for plots whose prices are ¥0. Such a price does not necessarily mean there is no cost to the seller, who is obviously not using a real estate agent as an intermediary, because no realtor will represent a property for which they can’t get a commission. That means even if the seller can dispose of their land at ¥0, they still have to spend time and energy, and probably a lot of it. That’s why Yoshikawa is calling for some kind of publicly sanctioned system that helps people get rid of land they want without the help of commercial realtors. Most people in that position have absolutely no idea what to do. Real estate is not “merchandise” in the classic sense. You cannot just throw it away if you can’t sell it. It’s always with you, and it’s always a financial burden in terms of taxes and upkeep. With depopulation, this problem of “negative value properties” will only get worse. The government has started tackling the problem, but so far their countermeasures involve too many strict conditions. 

Eventually, the interviewer gets to the heart of the matter and asks about the long-standing policy of pushing new housing construction. Yoshikawa mentions that land and housing prices in Tokyo have increased beyond the reach of the average person, so those with limited means have been going farther out into Chiba to purchase new homes and even used homes because land, at least, is still affordable. This trend was especially noticeable during and just after the pandemic, when people were more inclined to move out of the city for various reasons. In a sense, such buyers move to derelict housing developments for the same reason he did. The problem is that it isn’t until after they move that they realize the true circumstances. Even if they’re working remotely, stores are not conveniently located and infrastructure is wanting. Then they’re stuck. If you look at other regional areas you’ll find so-called compact cities, isolated urban clusters with lots of collective housing, but even these places are relatively expensive, so in the current economic environment where wages are not keeping up with the cost of living, there will always be people who move to inconvenient housing developments, but not enough to fill them and make them more desirable. 

“People who move to a place where the infrastructure is bad and the population shrinking tend to have low incomes, and as a society we don’t pay much attention to poor people,” says Yoshikawa. That’s why he thinks he still has a lot to learn about Japan’s land-use situation and thus will be able to continue making a living explaining what he knows for years to come.