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Japan
This Week in AsiaEconomics

Japan’s invisible problem: enough empty homes to house Hong Kong and no known owners

  • In Japan, ownership of an area of land the size of Taiwan is a mystery, and it’s causing problems for disaster relief programmes
  • Falling land values, tax quirks and patchy registration have left 3.5 million unoccupied residences, and an ageing population will make things worse

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There are 3.5 million unoccupied residences in Japan – more than the entire housing stock of Hong Kong – that are not up for sale, rent or development. Photo: Gavin Blair
Gavin Blair
At the dizzy heights of Japan’s bubble economy, the land around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was estimated to be worth more than all the real estate in California. In a reverse unthinkable in those heady days, there are now millions of hectares and millions of houses in Japan for which ownership cannot be established, are sitting empty, or even deliberately unclaimed by those who have inherited them.
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The combination of a shrinking population, falling land values, patchy registration records and a tax system ill-suited to the current situation has left ownership unclear on an estimated 4.1 million hectares, an area larger than Taiwan. There are also approximately 3.5 million unoccupied residences – more than the entire housing stock of Hong Kong – that are not up for sale, rent or development. Although the government and non-profit organisations (NPOs) are working to address this, Japan’s skewed demographics mean it is set to only get worse in the coming decades.
An abandoned plot of land in Japan. Photo: Gavin Blair
An abandoned plot of land in Japan. Photo: Gavin Blair

According to surveys by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism and the Ministry of Justice, registration records for 20 per cent of private land in Japan are older than 50 years. That rises to 26.6 per cent in rural areas, compared to 6.6 per cent in urban areas.

Shoko Yoshihara, research fellow at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research think tank and a leading authority on the issue, points out that despite the age of the records, some of these tracts may have owners.

“There is decreasing incentive to register land because of falling values, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is no owner. It may remain registered in the same person’s name for more than 50 years, but because of increased longevity, they may or may not be deceased,” explains Yoshihara, author of Land Issues in the Era of Depopulation: Policy Considerations for Missing Owners, Inheritance, and Abandoned Homes.

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