Three things can ruin an akiya purchase, and none of them show up when you walk the house: the property can be legally non rebuildable, the building can be unregistered, or the land can sit in a zone where you will never be allowed to run a business. All three are checkable from documents, often before you get on a plane.
I wrote a seven point checklist for walking the house already, and that one is about your eyes: the roof, the floors, the foundation, the septic tank. This post is about the checks you make on paper, and they are the ones that decide whether the house is buyable at all rather than how much it will cost to fix.
We have not bought yet. This is the list I built for our own search after I found out how many of the cheapest listings have something quietly wrong with them.
Why the cheapest listing is usually cheap for a reason
Something worth internalizing before the list. When a house is priced far below comparable stock in the same town, it is rarely a bargain nobody noticed. It is usually one of the problems below, and the seller knows.
I looked at a listing recently at ¥1,500,000, about $9,400. Built 2004, single story, 123 square meters, sixteen minutes’ walk from a JR main line station. Everything about it looked right. Then the description said, in one sentence, that the building has a tilt and leaks. Nearly a thousand people had viewed it and 38 had saved it, and nobody had bought it. A tilt on a house that is only twenty years old points at the foundation or the ground underneath, and that is the one defect you cannot fix yourself.
Cheap plus a specific stated defect is honest. Cheap with no explanation is the one to check hardest.
1. Is it non rebuildable?
This is the big one, it is binary, and it is the first thing to check.
Under the Building Standards Act, a site has to front a road at least 4 meters wide, for at least 2 meters of frontage. Both halves matter, and most English guidance only mentions the 2 meters.
A narrow lane is not automatically a fail, though. Many older roads under 4 meters are designated as deemed roads (2項道路 / nikou douro). Those count, but when you rebuild you have to set the building back 2 meters from the center of the road, which eats into your lot. A narrow lane that is not designated fails even if your frontage is generous. The rule applies inside city planning areas, so very rural listings outside them can be a different story. Ask.
Fail that and the property is 再建築不可, non rebuildable. The house standing there can be repaired and lived in, but nothing new may ever be built on that land. Most Japanese lenders will not touch it, which removes nearly every financed buyer from your eventual resale pool and leaves mostly cash buyers. Foreigners usually have to buy in cash anyway, because getting a loan in Japan as a non-resident is nearly impossible, and that is why these properties can be appealing on price.
What to ask for: the municipality’s road determination, 道路種別, in writing, for that specific frontage, plus a survey confirming width and length. These are generally posted in a property listing, but do not take the listing’s word for it. Go to the source and get it in writing.
2. Is the building actually registered?
Land and buildings are registered separately in Japan, and it is more common than you would think for the land to be properly registered while the building, or an extension, or a shed, is unregistered (未登記 / mitouki). It is also possible that there is a registered building that is no longer there because a previous homeowner removed it.
The check is simple and people skip it anyway: pull the registration certificate for the building, not just for the land. And know that paying property tax on a building is not evidence it is registered. Municipalities assess and tax buildings they can see, regardless of what the register says.
If you find no unregistered building, you are in the clear. If you find an unregistered building and you love it, you can still buy it, but you need to file a descriptive registration (表題登記 / hyoudai touki) within a month of the purchase date, or you could face an administrative fine of up to ¥100,000 (about $650). The easier route is to ask the seller to register it before closing.
3. What use zone is it in?
The land use zone (用途地域 / youto chiiki) decides what you are allowed to do on that land. If you have any thought of running a guesthouse, a workshop, a cafe or a studio, check this before anything else. If you are like me and really just want a vacation house and the challenge of renovating in another country, and resale is not as important, then the zone isn’t hugely important either. Use zones only exist inside city planning areas, so plenty of rural akiya have no use zone at all.
Hotel and inn businesses are prohibited outright in category one and two low rise residential, category one and two mid to high rise residential, and agricultural residential zones, plus both industrial zones. (See the table below.) A house in one of those can never get a simple lodging license at that address, no matter what you do to the building.
However, there is a home-sharing, Airbnb-friendly option available in most residential zones. It is commonly known as the minpaku law, and it comes with restrictions like a 180-night-a-year cap, and towns can restrict it further. I am covering the whole rental picture in an upcoming post.
| Use zone | House | Hotel, inn or simple lodging | Minpaku (home-sharing)* | Shop or cafe | Small workshop** |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category 1 low rise residential (第一種低層住居専用地域) | Yes | No | Yes | Only as part of your home, under 50 m² | Only as part of your home, under 50 m² |
| Category 2 low rise residential (第二種低層住居専用地域) | Yes | No | Yes | Up to 150 m², 2 floors | Yes, 2 floors max |
| Agricultural residential (田園住居地域), added 2018 | Yes | No | Yes | Up to 150 m², or 500 m² for farm stands and farm restaurants | Yes, 2 floors max, plus farm product processing |
| Category 1 mid to high rise residential (第一種中高層住居専用地域) | Yes | No | Yes | Up to 500 m², 2 floors | Yes, 2 floors max |
| Category 2 mid to high rise residential (第二種中高層住居専用地域) | Yes | No | Yes | Up to 1,500 m², 2 floors | Yes, 2 floors max |
| Category 1 residential (第一種住居地域) | Yes | Up to 3,000 m² | Yes | Up to 3,000 m² | Yes |
| Category 2 residential (第二種住居地域) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Up to 10,000 m² | Yes |
| Quasi residential (準住居地域) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Up to 10,000 m² | Yes |
| Neighborhood commercial (近隣商業地域) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Commercial (商業地域) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Quasi industrial (準工業地域) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Industrial (工業地域) | Yes | No | Yes | Up to 10,000 m² | Yes |
| Exclusively industrial (工業専用地域) | No | No | No | No | Yes |
4. Is it in an urbanization control area?
An urbanization control area (市街化調整区域 / Shigaika Chousei Kuiki) is land the city has deliberately decided not to develop. Plenty of very cheap rural akiya sit in one, and it comes with restrictions on rebuilding and on changing the use of the building. Houses in urbanization control areas usually need permission to be rebuilt, and additions can be restricted too.
There is a sharper version of this trap. If the original building permission was tied to a specific person, which is the case for a farmhouse or a branch family dwelling, then the permission does not simply transfer with the sale. Running it as an absentee short term rental would be illegal without a City Planning Act permit.
If you are looking rural and want to run a short term rental, ask the city planning department about the specific parcel. This is a five minute phone call for an agent, and it is worth insisting on.
5. What is the build date, and why does it matter for earthquakes?
Two dates matter for seismic standards, and a third rule uses a different date entirely, which is where the confusion comes from.
June 1, 1981. The new seismic standard. A house whose building confirmation predates that date was designed to the old code. This is the split people mean when they say pre or post 1981, and it means your house may need to be retrofitted, which can be costly.
2000. A further revision, specifically for wooden houses. It tightened foundation specification, required hold down hardware at column bases, and required bracing walls to be placed in a balanced way rather than wherever was convenient. Almost nobody mentions this one, and it means a 1985 house is post 1981 and pre 2000. That gap is real, and if you have the choice between two similar houses, the later one is a better house, but most houses will need to be looked at no matter what.
The trap inside the date
Here is the nuance that trips people up. The year in a listing is the completion date. What governs the seismic standard is the building confirmation date, and that comes months earlier.
A house completed in April 1981 was almost certainly confirmed under the old code. A house built in 1981 may look like it is in the clear, but there is a good chance it will not be. I am looking at all dates and just preparing myself if we buy a pre-1981 house, but I am going in with the knowledge that we will need a seismic inspection and possibly a retrofit.
Anything mid-1982 or later is usually safe, but do your own due diligence and get it confirmed. Don’t just go by the year printed in the ad.
6. Do the original documents exist?
Ask for the building confirmation certificate (建築確認済証 / Kenchiku Kakunin Zumishō) and the completion inspection certificate (検査済証 / Kensa Zumishō).
Many akiya have neither on file, and many are legally non conforming: lawful when built, not compliant with today’s code. On its own that is fine and very common. It bites when you need to file a building confirmation application for structural work, because with no original drawings you are paying for a survey and a redesign before you can even apply. That is real money and real weeks, and if you know this before the purchase decision, you can decide whether it is worth buying a house that is missing one or both. If you have the completion inspection certificate, you may be in the clear, but it is up to you to do the due diligence rather than be surprised during the renovation.
7. What do the hazard maps say?
Check landslide, flood and liquefaction for the specific address, not the town. Municipal hazard maps are public and online.
A landslide special warning zone (土砂災害特別警戒区域 / Dosha Saigai Tokubetsu Keikai Kuiki), often called the red zone, restricts building and is close to fatal for resale. There is also a yellow zone (土砂災害警戒区域), which means the land is in a landslide area but without the building restrictions. This really matters most in hillside towns, and it is why I am cautious about the cheap hillside stock in places like Atami. It is a place we are actually looking at, because of its beach town vibes and proximity to Tokyo, but check this up front. We are okay buying in the yellow zone, but would think twice about the red zone.
8. The two things you have to arrange as a foreign buyer
Not property checks exactly, but they belong on the same list because they are easy to miss and both have teeth.
A domestic contact. Since April 2024, where the registered owner has an address abroad, a domestic contact (国内連絡先 / kokunai renrakusaki) is a registered item on the property register. It can be a person or a company, and it is usually the agent or the judicial scrivener. Line one up before closing. You can register that there is no contact, but it is a visible flag on a public register at exactly the moment Japan is tightening its scrutiny of foreign ownership.
The 20 day filing. Since April 1, 2026, a non-resident acquiring Japanese real property must file a report through the Bank of Japan to the Ministry of Finance within 20 days of acquisition. The old exemption for buying your own home now covers only rights such as leasehold, not the freehold itself. Failing to file, or filing falsely, carries up to six months of confinement or a fine of up to ¥500,000 (about $3,100). That is a criminal penalty, not an administrative one. Confirm with your scrivener at closing, because 20 days goes fast when you are flying home. More on the ownership side in can foreigners buy property in Japan.
9. The tax rule that punishes an empty house
Worth knowing before you buy a house you will only visit twice a year.
Japan’s vacant house law was strengthened in 2023, and it added the category “Poorly Managed Vacant House” (管理不全空家 / Kanri Fuzen Akiya) below the old dangerous designation, for houses that are merely poorly managed. Think overgrown weeds, a shabby exterior, and in general an eyesore. If you ignore municipal guidance and your property gets a formal “recommendation,” you lose the residential land tax break. The land is no longer taxed at one sixth of its assessed value, which can roughly triple or quadruple the land portion of your bill!
An overgrown garden on a house nobody has visited for eight months is exactly the trigger. Paying somebody local to keep an eye on it is insurance, not overhead.
The order I would run these in
You do not need to do all nine on every listing you like the look of. Run them in this order and most properties fail or pass early.
- Non rebuildable. Binary, and it ends the conversation.
- Use zone and urbanization control area, if you have any business plans.
- Build date, and pull the confirmation date for anything before mid-1982.
- Building registration.
- Hazard maps.
- Everything else once you are serious.
The first three are all doable from your kitchen table with an agent’s help, before you spend money on a flight. There are also companies that help foreigners with a lot of this legwork, and the several thousand dollars spent on one is probably worth it.
Get the whole thing as a checklist
I turned all of this into one page you can actually work from, called The Akiya Checklist. Nine checks in the order I run them, what a fail looks like on each one, and the email to send an agent before you let yourself get attached to a house. It is free, and there are no prices in it anywhere, because it answers a different question: not what a house costs, but whether it is worth buying at all.
Grab it below and I will send it straight over.
FAQs
What does non rebuildable mean for an akiya?
It means the site does not meet the road access rule, so the existing house can be repaired but nothing new may ever be built there. The site must front a road at least 4 meters wide for at least 2 meters, though older narrow roads designated as deemed roads can still count if you set the building back. Most lenders will not finance non rebuildable property, so your buyer pool is mostly cash. That can work for foreign cash buyers, but there are pitfalls.
How do I know if an akiya building is registered?
Pull the registration certificate for the building itself, separately from the land. Extensions and outbuildings are the most common unregistered parts. Do not treat a property tax bill as proof of registration, because municipalities tax buildings they can see whether or not they appear on the register.
Is a pre 1981 akiya a bad buy?
Not automatically, but it puts a seismic diagnosis and possible retrofit into your budget, and that is the largest unknown in the whole project. Filtering for houses built mid-1982 or later removes most of it, and plenty of cheap listings qualify.
Can I check any of this before visiting Japan?
Yes. Road determination, zoning, build date and hazard maps are all obtainable remotely, usually through the agent or directly from the municipality. That is most of the deal breakers, checked before you buy a plane ticket.
Where to go from here
Once a property clears these, the next questions are what it costs to buy and what it costs to fix. Start with what a “free” akiya actually costs, the fees nobody mentions, and what an akiya renovation actually costs. Then check what you can legally DIY in Japan before you plan the work.
Want to watch us run this list on real houses, mistakes included? I send a weekly email with the real numbers as we save, pick a town, and eventually tear into a house. That includes the parts that never make it to the blog.
Rather watch than read? I am documenting the whole move, and soon the renovation, on YouTube.
Read next
- Are akiya really free? What a ¥0 house actually costs
- What you can and cannot legally DIY in Japan
- Can foreigners buy property in Japan?
Until next time,
Selene & Devin
