Where to Actually Find Akiya Listings in Japan
The cheapest, most interesting vacant houses rarely reach the English aggregators. Here's the real map of where akiya are listed — and how to read it.
Most English coverage of cheap Japanese houses points you at a handful of subscription aggregators. They're a fine starting point — but the cheapest and most interesting akiya often never reach them. Here's the actual landscape.
Municipal akiya banks — the primary source
Nearly every rural town and city in Japan runs its own vacant-house bank (空き家バンク): a page on the local-government website listing houses, and sometimes land, that owners want to sell or rent. This is where the real supply lives. The catch:
- Published only in Japanese
- Usually no map, no translation
- Listings can disappear within weeks
The towns most worth watching are often the most rural — exactly the ones that don't syndicate to the big portals.
The national portal
Japan's transport ministry backs a nationwide akiya-bank portal run by two private companies. It aggregates many municipal banks, but not all — and the towns that opt out are frequently the most interesting.
English aggregators
A growing set of services translate and re-list akiya for a monthly fee. Convenient, but you're seeing a filtered, delayed subset of what the towns actually publish.
The practical workflow
- Pick a region you'd actually want to live in — not just the cheapest prefecture.
- Find the akiya-bank page for each town in that region.
- Check them on a schedule — listings move fast.
- When a house looks right, contact the municipality directly. The town introduces you to the owner or a local agent.
That last step matters: the listing is an invitation to enquire, not a storefront. Every real purchase runs through the town.
Or let someone read them for you
Watching dozens of Japanese town-hall pages every week is exactly the kind of work that's easy to drop. That's why Akiya Letter exists — we read the municipal banks across Japan and send the most interesting houses to English readers every week, with a link straight back to the source.
This is a chapter from our free guide. The full version covers the buying process, fees and taxes, renovation budgets, and visas for owners.
Read the full guide
This is one chapter. The complete guide covers the buying process, fees and taxes line by line, renovation budgets, visas for owners, and three worked examples.
Buying an Akiya — the guide →