Just before Christmas, the Asahi Shimbun ran a story in preparation for the first anniversary of the Noto Peninsula earthquake, whose effects still weigh heavily on residents of the area. Demolition work on structures damaged in the quake continues because many of the houses in the areas most affected were already abandoned and thus local authorities couldn’t contact owners easily. The article first focuses on the city of Suzu in Ichikawa Prefecture. The coastal residential zone was badly damaged, and since houses were densely packed and the streets only wide enough for one car to pass through at a time, cleaning up the area has been very difficult. 

According to Asahi’s investigation, many of the houses in this area were not only already vacant when the quake hit, some were in such bad condition that they were uninhabitable, mainly because the houses had no value whatsoever. A survey conducted in 2022 found that 1,365 houses in Suzu were abandoned, of which 60 had insurmountable structural problems. The quake caused more than 3,000 houses to collapse, but this number only covers houses that were occupied, and the city has yet to carry out a more extensive survey to comprehend the full story with regard to vacant houses that collapsed or were fully damaged. 

The problem for the city is that tearing down a house requires consent from the owner, and if local authorities cannot contact the owner they usually do nothing; but even if they do find the owner, it doesn’t mean that person can be compelled to either renovate the house or demolish it, both of which cost a lot of money.

The situation is even worse in nearby Wajima, where 30 percent of the houses in the “urban” part of the municipality are vacant. Local leaders told Asahi that some of the owners of these houses do occasionally stop by to visit their properties when they come to pay their respect at family graves in the vicinity, which makes these leaders reluctant to tell these owners they have to do something with their properties. “It might be difficult for them to part with the house,” said one official. 

Asahi extrapolated these issues to talk about fears regarding the long predicted Nankai Trough or Tokyo earthquakes, which would affect a huge area from the capital all the way to the western edge of the Kansai region. If a quake with the intensity of at least minus 6 on the Japanese scale struck this area, it could be a bigger mess than anticipated, since about 1.45 million houses in the region are vacant wooden structures, a number that increases every year. Asahi’s own research found that about 750,000 of these houses are abandoned, meaning the owners of more than half do not even visit or keep up the property. Even in Tokyo’s 23 wards, where real estate values are the most expensive in Japan, there are 55,000 abandoned wooden houses, the most being in Setagaya Ward (7,500). One Setagaya official said the problem will only get worse because the boomer cohort will soon die out, leaving their children with properties those children likely don’t want to take over.

Matters are even more desperate in regional capitals along the Pacific coast west of Tokyo. Eleven of these cities count more than 10,000 abandoned houses each. Wakayama has 12,000, which is a serious problem since the cost of demolition has increased tremendously in recent years, making if virtually impossible for owners to afford getting rid of those structures. And as one official told Asahi, in most of the cases, the owners don’t live anywhere nearby, having inherited the properties by default. They probably don’t even think about those houses. Kochi Prefecture may have the highest overall percentage of vacant houses—an estimated 31 percent of houses in Tosa Shimizu are vacant. The portion hovers around 20 percent for 13 cities and towns in Shikoku and on Kyushu. Predictably, up to 50 percent of the populations in these towns and cities are over 65. The nationwide percentage of elderly is 28.7 percent. 

The so-called Akiya (empty house) Law enacted in 2015 allows local governments to designate houses as being officially “vacant,” meaning they are at risk of collapsing. Owners of such houses are not eligible for property tax savings that apply to people with land occupied by a structure. Supposedly, such designations also mean the government can demolish the structures at its own discretion, but most local governments can’t afford to do that and so try to make the owner foot the bill. It’s essentially a standoff. As of March 2024, only 40,000 houses nationwide had been cited under the law by local governments, and of those houses only 728 had been demolished and 3,589 owners threatened with loss of tax breaks. Consequently, the central government is planning to enact legislation that will compel people who inherit vacant properties to register themselves as owners within three years of the previous owner dying, but that hardly seems a feasible move. It will cost money and resources just to track down these heirs. 

It isn’t until the end of the article that Asahi gets to the core of the problem. A real estate consultant points out that the real reason there are so many vacant houses is excess new construction, which basically renders used houses worthless and impossible to sell, so all these moves to address akiya is “like pouring cold water on hot stones.” As of 2023, there were 65 million homes in Japan comprising 56 million households, meaning an excess of 9 million homes. The policy of driving new home construction for the sake of growth, as we’ve pointed out countless times on this blog, is completely unsustainable. We’ve already passed the point of no return.