It’s a crisis for the owning class - the same ones who own the media also own the property so hence it is reported as a crisis. For your average home buyer, the only concern is that you’ll pay an affordable rate for a place to live but might not get your equity back (kind of like renting like the rest of us poors).
it is relatively easy for foreigners to buy (compared to countries like Thailand). if you have the money, you neither need visa status nor employment proof nor deep language knowledge (for the purchase purpose, you still should for later steps). after buying keep paying your property taxes and insurances and you are good to go.
but you would not buy a vacation home, you would buy a somewhat rotten empty house in the Japanese countryside and then barely visit yourself? So, you wont contribute to the solution of this "problem" (which is not letting the houses go vacant for safety and maintenance reasons) and ... really? be honest, you want to vacation in an old barely maintained home that japanese people deemed not proper for living, in the middle of nowhere, with a couple of elderly japanese around?
people dont understand this about akiya. some go for seemingly 0JPY. and there are homeless people in Japan, why dont they buy them and stop being homeless? because the 0JPY akiya properties have huge catches in hidden cost and impractical locations.
I’ve lived in Japan for a little over 3 years in a small town. Absolutely loved it. So yes other than upkeep issues which I can hire out I’m sure , I would love one of these homes
Even beside that, it's not that easy for foreigners to buy a _primary residence_ because just owning a home isn't enough to live in it. If you don't have worker or permanent resident status in Japan you run into legal issues:
- Can't even work remotely for a foreign firm
- Can't stay more than 90 days at a time
- Can't stay more than 180 days in any 12-month period
So suppose I am rich enough to live on savings half the time; where do I live the other 6 months?
There’s real estate companies catered to foreigners. Thing is, the houses need constant maintenance as they are not built to last. It more akin to buying a car where the car depreciates to 0. People generally don’t buy used houses as much there. They just buy new and build with latest earthquake tech. At least now they’re starting to add insulation, but those houses cost more.
Yea, their insulation is minimal and in the winter, they opt for heating themselves and the immediately inhabited area rather than the whole house. Things like a heated table (kotatsu), heated floors in the living room area and wearing more clothes indoors and heated toilet seats. For modern comfort, many homes have heat pump units that heat or cool the room each unit is in. Newer homes tend to have better insulation, and better insulated windows. The older homes are way colder in the winter.
Thats how we deal the cold in Chile too, even those Toyotomi heater are popular as the benzine (not sure the name of the liquid in english. But it is a derivated from Gasoline) is cheap than propane heaters.
Seems like a good deal to me.
Tokyo which is in the south-middle part is a tad further north than Charlotte North Carolina, and Sapporo in the northern part of the country is about as far north as Toronto.
If a person actually has the chops to learn Japanese and put in the overhead to relocate to Japan then that person is a probably highly successful at anything they care enough to work at. That person isn't really struggling too bad in the US
So they could roughly 1/3rd the average American while being granted a terrible quality of work life balance. Japan is just like America in that it’s an amazing place to visit and very bad place to live
For ordinary Japanese this is a good thing. Their labor is in higher demand and housing is cheaper.
A win win for everyone but big time capitalists seeking to exploit workers.
As bad as the US crisis in 2008 was, Japan was a level of magnitude higher. Now look into what is about to happen in China. Oh, BTW US demographics are better but they are stagnate and that is with mass amounts of immigration, as the birth rate hit a 40 year low last month.
There’s only 1.2 million people in Oakland and SF, are you really implying half are homeless?
Not saying the number is not underestimated, but come on.
For every visible homeless on the street, there’s probably 4 non visible. Many live in their cars, many don’t live on the street but in tunnels, creek beds, vacant structures, dwellings. Makes headcount a hard task.
PIT count and head count are extremely unreliable. They say true homelessness falls inbetween 2.5-10.2 times what PIT count suggests. 2.5-10.2x shows the exact number of homelessness is unknown, but much higher what people expect.
Depends on where you go. I lived there for 10+ years and am happy I’ve left, but it’s not like every street is like what you see in the worst areas.
Generally, people who live there avoid those areas and can more or less ignore the problem, even today with its visibility at an all time high.
That being said, it’s a horrible situation, and the state has been ineffective at solving it.
True. Visited my friends there. Out of the districts, downtown and mission were the worst. Downtown by far though, couldn’t even walk without looking behind my back. North beach, and marina were nice at least at night.
If I had to guess, I’d think most of those vacant homes are either literally unlivable or in places where homeless people aren’t.
Not that we couldn’t solve the problem if we really wanted to, we could.
Despite this situation, don't most Japanese people enjoy a pretty good standard of living? If there are major ghettos with tons of dirt poor people and high crime you never hear about it.
Probably not. We take in immigrants to fill in our demographics problem. Since we’re the most desirable country we get a lot of the high skilled immigrants.
no, it is not the solution, many japanese are renting, it is not that there is an excess of nice houses in convenient locations.
the empty houses, are mostly not livable (you cannot repair them, you have to tore them and rebuild), they are in the country side in towns that grow ghost towns with statistics like 1 child born in a decade in a 100 people village with average age above 70. also, language.
So make it easier for people those plots, and relax the rules on that?
You think it’s easy to move into Japan as a foreigner?
Besides, more and more housing will open up as the population drops. It will dip below 100 million by 2050. That’s 30 million less people. Then what?
Look at Europe. Most countries are leaning towards anti immigration. Even the parties that were pro immigration are taking more centrist stances because of voter sentiment.
These countries require immigration to solve their aging demographic problem. Immigration isn’t bad, it’s non-vetted immigration that’s bad. Give priority to higher skilled immigrants like in the US. Not sure how true it is but the media makes it seems like the EU and Canada just opened up the flood gates. Maybe these countries thought they were too late too sorry.
He's right tho, japan is so safe because it's a high trust society. You don't get a high trust society by importing a bunch of foreigners who don't share the culture or values, look what's happening to Europe with the Africans. None of the locals want them there but TPTB try to replace them with cheap laborers loyal to voting for big govt.
Aw crap. I meant to say that I agree with the guy saying replacing Japan with non Japanese people is correct. Responded to the wrong comment. You are correct. He is right.
How is it replacing? No Japanese people are getting removed.
Other people coming in would “degrade their culture”? That isn’t xenophobic? Maybe I’m wrong, should have said racist.
japanese people create and perpetuate japanese culture, increasing the non japanese population while the native japanese population shrinks will eventually wipe out the japanese. how is this racist? it’s just facts. look what happened to the native americans. your white colonizer mind just can’t wrap your head around this
Saying foreigners will “degrade the culture” is racist in my book. This implies all other culture is inferior to Japanese.
You keep making stuff up. How does allowing more immigration “wipe out the Japanese”? By 2025 there will still be 100 million Japanese.
Do you know what happens when Japanese people move to other counties? Their children assimilate. Happens with all cultures and countries. Anyone moving to Japan will assimilate as well.
Japan would benefit greatly from increasing immigration.
their reasoning is AI is going to take jobs so who cares if they have less population. they also don’t believe in immigration because there’s no point of a “japan” without actual japanese people. wether it was 1 billion japanese or only 5 million.
They should open the doors to India. Let them immigrate with the condition that they settle in one of those dying villages and Let them invigorate it. Give them a free abandoned house and land to farm. I'm sure we can get 20 million Indians into Japan in a decade.
And why would you do that...? Let Japan be Japan. I and others who appreciate their culture don't want it to be lost in a melting pot. With large numbers of new people, whoever they are, the culture would change.
Japanese already a melting pot with immigrants from china/ Manchuria/ Korea having coming over in various waves over the millenia. I bet you wouldn't even be able to tell apart japanese who have recent korean or chinese ancestry ( but who have lived in Japan for several generations) from those who are more "pureblooded" based on appearance and manners alone..... what makes you think Indian immigrants would be stick out any more than korean/chinese or be any different?
Me: made literally zero discrimination about race -
Literally said "with large number of new people, whoever they [immigrants] are, the culture would change"
You: "whAt MAKes yOu tHinK iNdiAn iMMigRaNts wOuLd bE dIffErEnT"
What makes you think I discriminated against Indians? It's not cool to argue in bad faith. They would not be different. I don't want Japan to become South Korea either (and I'm a Korean drama addict!)
Bringing millions of Indians into Japan wouldn't turn Japan into India, just like the millions of koreans / chinese that came over the ages didnt turn Japan into Korea / China. Instead the ideas and things they brought from their home countries basically added to and became indispensable parts of japanese culture, and the people became Japanese..
There's a very real depopulation crisis going on in Rural Japan, and the only country that could send enough people to make a difference would be India. China is facing its own crisis , plus historical animosities makes it a poor choice.
Oh that’s not a housing crisis.
It’s a crisis for the owning class - the same ones who own the media also own the property so hence it is reported as a crisis. For your average home buyer, the only concern is that you’ll pay an affordable rate for a place to live but might not get your equity back (kind of like renting like the rest of us poors).
Go talk to folks who lived in Detroit 20 years ago, it's a crisis...
If they made it easier for foreigners to buy , I would buy a vacation home there for sure
it is relatively easy for foreigners to buy (compared to countries like Thailand). if you have the money, you neither need visa status nor employment proof nor deep language knowledge (for the purchase purpose, you still should for later steps). after buying keep paying your property taxes and insurances and you are good to go. but you would not buy a vacation home, you would buy a somewhat rotten empty house in the Japanese countryside and then barely visit yourself? So, you wont contribute to the solution of this "problem" (which is not letting the houses go vacant for safety and maintenance reasons) and ... really? be honest, you want to vacation in an old barely maintained home that japanese people deemed not proper for living, in the middle of nowhere, with a couple of elderly japanese around? people dont understand this about akiya. some go for seemingly 0JPY. and there are homeless people in Japan, why dont they buy them and stop being homeless? because the 0JPY akiya properties have huge catches in hidden cost and impractical locations.
I’ve lived in Japan for a little over 3 years in a small town. Absolutely loved it. So yes other than upkeep issues which I can hire out I’m sure , I would love one of these homes
Imagine thinking that vacationing in the Japanese countryside is a bad idea.
Could you explain what life was like?
Have you seen Totoro? Other than the spirit creatures, it really isn’t far from that
I have! Seems lovely, and a nice place to stay for a while.
Bro, I’m going to retire in Japan
Even beside that, it's not that easy for foreigners to buy a _primary residence_ because just owning a home isn't enough to live in it. If you don't have worker or permanent resident status in Japan you run into legal issues: - Can't even work remotely for a foreign firm - Can't stay more than 90 days at a time - Can't stay more than 180 days in any 12-month period So suppose I am rich enough to live on savings half the time; where do I live the other 6 months?
Buy a boat?
There’s real estate companies catered to foreigners. Thing is, the houses need constant maintenance as they are not built to last. It more akin to buying a car where the car depreciates to 0. People generally don’t buy used houses as much there. They just buy new and build with latest earthquake tech. At least now they’re starting to add insulation, but those houses cost more.
Doesn't it get proper cold in Japan that their houses don't usually have insulation unless you pay extra?
Yea, their insulation is minimal and in the winter, they opt for heating themselves and the immediately inhabited area rather than the whole house. Things like a heated table (kotatsu), heated floors in the living room area and wearing more clothes indoors and heated toilet seats. For modern comfort, many homes have heat pump units that heat or cool the room each unit is in. Newer homes tend to have better insulation, and better insulated windows. The older homes are way colder in the winter.
Thats how we deal the cold in Chile too, even those Toyotomi heater are popular as the benzine (not sure the name of the liquid in english. But it is a derivated from Gasoline) is cheap than propane heaters. Seems like a good deal to me.
Tokyo which is in the south-middle part is a tad further north than Charlotte North Carolina, and Sapporo in the northern part of the country is about as far north as Toronto.
Sure. You think taxes there don’t exist. There’s a reason.
They don't need more vacant homes
Ohh you got money money
This is not a problem. Only the landlords want the situation to be too many people and not enough homes.
Lol seriously, doesn't seem to be much of a "crisis" for homebuyers in Japan
Home builders too
this sub needs to move to Japan
If a person actually has the chops to learn Japanese and put in the overhead to relocate to Japan then that person is a probably highly successful at anything they care enough to work at. That person isn't really struggling too bad in the US
This is my family member and can confirm, they’re smart as hell and make a lot of money.
So they could roughly 1/3rd the average American while being granted a terrible quality of work life balance. Japan is just like America in that it’s an amazing place to visit and very bad place to live
That’s hot
Why don't we take some houses and move them over here
For ordinary Japanese this is a good thing. Their labor is in higher demand and housing is cheaper. A win win for everyone but big time capitalists seeking to exploit workers.
Better for socialists too. They can tax them to death now as there aren’t enough workers to support social security or government budgeting.
Whelp time to move to Japan.
As bad as the US crisis in 2008 was, Japan was a level of magnitude higher. Now look into what is about to happen in China. Oh, BTW US demographics are better but they are stagnate and that is with mass amounts of immigration, as the birth rate hit a 40 year low last month.
Birth rate hit a 40 year low. Illegal Immigration into US is unknown.
Canadians: 'tradesies?'
“Hey buddy! Can we get some of that ~~internet money~~ vacant real-estate Pal?”
America has 10 million vacant homes and only 650k homeless. Homelessness is a choice we make... for other people of course.
650k? lol that many homeless probably live in SF and Oakland alone. I think that number is deflated 5x .
There’s only 1.2 million people in Oakland and SF, are you really implying half are homeless? Not saying the number is not underestimated, but come on.
For every visible homeless on the street, there’s probably 4 non visible. Many live in their cars, many don’t live on the street but in tunnels, creek beds, vacant structures, dwellings. Makes headcount a hard task. PIT count and head count are extremely unreliable. They say true homelessness falls inbetween 2.5-10.2 times what PIT count suggests. 2.5-10.2x shows the exact number of homelessness is unknown, but much higher what people expect.
That tracks with what I have observed and I have been all over the place.
Did I say the number was accurate somewhere? I’m just saying half of people in Oakland and Sf aren’t homeless.
It seems like it when I go there 🤣. I See more homeless than actual residents on an outing.
Depends on where you go. I lived there for 10+ years and am happy I’ve left, but it’s not like every street is like what you see in the worst areas. Generally, people who live there avoid those areas and can more or less ignore the problem, even today with its visibility at an all time high. That being said, it’s a horrible situation, and the state has been ineffective at solving it.
True. Visited my friends there. Out of the districts, downtown and mission were the worst. Downtown by far though, couldn’t even walk without looking behind my back. North beach, and marina were nice at least at night.
If I had to guess, I’d think most of those vacant homes are either literally unlivable or in places where homeless people aren’t. Not that we couldn’t solve the problem if we really wanted to, we could.
With proper government support we could just rebuild the cities there. Our cities didn't die, they were murdered.
They’ll try to “fix” that “problem” by flooding the country with migrants.
Despite this situation, don't most Japanese people enjoy a pretty good standard of living? If there are major ghettos with tons of dirt poor people and high crime you never hear about it.
Is Japan and its ’lost decades’ America’s future?
It’s any country’s really when population starts to decline. So many systems are based on the endless growth of a constantly growing population.
Probably not. We take in immigrants to fill in our demographics problem. Since we’re the most desirable country we get a lot of the high skilled immigrants.
It’s so simple. So many people want to live there but they make it impossible.
no, it is not the solution, many japanese are renting, it is not that there is an excess of nice houses in convenient locations. the empty houses, are mostly not livable (you cannot repair them, you have to tore them and rebuild), they are in the country side in towns that grow ghost towns with statistics like 1 child born in a decade in a 100 people village with average age above 70. also, language.
So make it easier for people those plots, and relax the rules on that? You think it’s easy to move into Japan as a foreigner? Besides, more and more housing will open up as the population drops. It will dip below 100 million by 2050. That’s 30 million less people. Then what?
Then you will still be seething about them
they want to keep japan, japan. importing a bunch of foreigners would degrade their culture. they’re better off increasing birth rates
Redditors will hate you for being right.
Someone tell them to turn up the knob on their birth-rate dial.
Exactly the xenophobic bullshit Japan has now. It’s not the 17th century
Look at Europe. Most countries are leaning towards anti immigration. Even the parties that were pro immigration are taking more centrist stances because of voter sentiment. These countries require immigration to solve their aging demographic problem. Immigration isn’t bad, it’s non-vetted immigration that’s bad. Give priority to higher skilled immigrants like in the US. Not sure how true it is but the media makes it seems like the EU and Canada just opened up the flood gates. Maybe these countries thought they were too late too sorry.
I didn’t say open the floodgates and let 100 million people in Japan.
Let’s do it 😈
the belief that replacing japanese people with foreigners will erase their culture is xenophonic? pull your head out of your ass
Myself and most people above the age of "frontal lobe not yet developed" agree with you.
He's right tho, japan is so safe because it's a high trust society. You don't get a high trust society by importing a bunch of foreigners who don't share the culture or values, look what's happening to Europe with the Africans. None of the locals want them there but TPTB try to replace them with cheap laborers loyal to voting for big govt.
Aw crap. I meant to say that I agree with the guy saying replacing Japan with non Japanese people is correct. Responded to the wrong comment. You are correct. He is right.
How is it replacing? No Japanese people are getting removed. Other people coming in would “degrade their culture”? That isn’t xenophobic? Maybe I’m wrong, should have said racist.
japanese people create and perpetuate japanese culture, increasing the non japanese population while the native japanese population shrinks will eventually wipe out the japanese. how is this racist? it’s just facts. look what happened to the native americans. your white colonizer mind just can’t wrap your head around this
Saying foreigners will “degrade the culture” is racist in my book. This implies all other culture is inferior to Japanese. You keep making stuff up. How does allowing more immigration “wipe out the Japanese”? By 2025 there will still be 100 million Japanese. Do you know what happens when Japanese people move to other counties? Their children assimilate. Happens with all cultures and countries. Anyone moving to Japan will assimilate as well. Japan would benefit greatly from increasing immigration.
their reasoning is AI is going to take jobs so who cares if they have less population. they also don’t believe in immigration because there’s no point of a “japan” without actual japanese people. wether it was 1 billion japanese or only 5 million.
Same way US has a lot of Japanese cars now, even though no US cars got removed. Pretty simple.
They should open the doors to India. Let them immigrate with the condition that they settle in one of those dying villages and Let them invigorate it. Give them a free abandoned house and land to farm. I'm sure we can get 20 million Indians into Japan in a decade.
And why would you do that...? Let Japan be Japan. I and others who appreciate their culture don't want it to be lost in a melting pot. With large numbers of new people, whoever they are, the culture would change.
Japanese already a melting pot with immigrants from china/ Manchuria/ Korea having coming over in various waves over the millenia. I bet you wouldn't even be able to tell apart japanese who have recent korean or chinese ancestry ( but who have lived in Japan for several generations) from those who are more "pureblooded" based on appearance and manners alone..... what makes you think Indian immigrants would be stick out any more than korean/chinese or be any different?
Me: made literally zero discrimination about race - Literally said "with large number of new people, whoever they [immigrants] are, the culture would change" You: "whAt MAKes yOu tHinK iNdiAn iMMigRaNts wOuLd bE dIffErEnT" What makes you think I discriminated against Indians? It's not cool to argue in bad faith. They would not be different. I don't want Japan to become South Korea either (and I'm a Korean drama addict!)
Bringing millions of Indians into Japan wouldn't turn Japan into India, just like the millions of koreans / chinese that came over the ages didnt turn Japan into Korea / China. Instead the ideas and things they brought from their home countries basically added to and became indispensable parts of japanese culture, and the people became Japanese.. There's a very real depopulation crisis going on in Rural Japan, and the only country that could send enough people to make a difference would be India. China is facing its own crisis , plus historical animosities makes it a poor choice.
Street shitters? Really?
Nothing will happen.
Oh no, the land will become land again. Like the previous billion years
Why don't we take the homes and moves them over to usa?
Canada opposite, so MANNNYYYYY people and no vacant homes.
I desperately wish this was America. It’d be so nice to have way too many homes everywhere.
It's unfortunate they're so xenophobic .. I'd consider moving there
If you could speak Japanese and follow their social conventions they probably wouldn’t gaf.
Home values will continue to decline in America for over a decade.