Ibaraki Llama brought me here

[VanillaEssence]

Hi everyone! Really glad to have found this community. I’ve always been aware of Akiya in Japan but Ibaraki Llama’s YouTube videos have really inspired me to seek my own kominka. My wife is Japanese, and not that keen on Inaka life, but it just makes sense to me to live a mortgage and rent free life. I’m from a small farm in Australia and while I do love Tokyo it’d be nice to have a place I can move around in. I’ve actually found a place that looks pretty much perfect and pretty similar though a bit less impressive Ibaraki Llama’s place but it has one problem. It appears to be an amalgam of about 5 different properties I guess, but 2 of them are registered as farmland (very small 900m2 or less). Does anyone know the best way to get around this? Is it possible to win the auction and then convert the land to mixed use? It’s a foreclosure and appears to be unoccupied. Should I go through a real estate agent?

Thank you

Edit: It is occupied

[GaijinAgain]

Welcome. (I'm new here myself actually!)

To be honest, if the property is occupied, you should skip it. I've heard it is extremely difficult to evict someone in these situations, even if you own the property. Llama-san even said as much in one of his videos.

Also, the idea of mortgage free sounds nice, but once you add up all the costs, will it really be loan free? I guess it depends on how much you have in the bank. But I would imagine most Kominka cost a bit in upkeep, even if you don't have to remodel/refurbish the hell out of it just to live in it.

That said, I hope you can find a place to call your own. If I didn't already have a house, going the kominka route would certainly be the way I'd get property.

[VanillaEssence]

To be honest, if the property is occupied, you should skip it. I've heard it is extremely difficult to evict someone in these situations, even if you own the property. Llama-san even said as much in one of his videos.

Welcome back at ya. Yeah I’ve been reading a bit and it does seem rather difficult without hiring the local yakuza for some jiageya lol. I wonder if that means I can get squatter’s rights for Llama’s place then . And yes you’re right about it not being free but my expectation would be that one could get a ~300万日 place into pretty good shape for a total of around (but hopefully less than) 1000万日. It does seem like this may not be the property for me but I’ll do some more research anyway as it’ll no doubt prove valuable if I start looking for something else.

[GaijinAgain]

TIL: How to say Land Shark in Japanese !!

Yeah, 1,000-man would be cheap compared to the usual route of buying land and building a place.

[Zasso Nouka]

Welcome to Japan Simple Life VanillaEssence and thank you for taking the time to sign and a big thank you also to @Ibaraki llama for bringing you this way. Funny coincidence but I was watching one of his videos on how he bought his place just yesterday, strange how the universe works sometimes.

Properly restored kominka really do look awesome so I do hope you can find one suitable but as mentioned by @GaijinAgain evicting someone can be very difficult and if they have friends and family in the area that could negatively impact your reputation when moving into a small rural community.

On the subject of farmland it is possible to convert to other uses or become registered as a farmer but that would depend on the local council and Nougyo Inkai so you would have to sound them out. What it boils down to is if the council wants to attract newcomers and you can make friends or win over the Nougyo Inkai. Sometimes it's possible, specially on really small plots of land directly attached to a house but sometimes they just won't shift and it's totally impossible. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the process and it's almost like some communities would prefer to die out than open up to newcomers and then there are other places that will almost bend over backwards to help you settle into them.

[Ibaraki llama]

Welcome, glad you found your way here. Youtube is pushing my channel a bit and it's gone from 20-30 views an hour a couple of days ago to 3000 an hour now.

I don't think they'll let you bid if you're not a registered farmer if the farmland is still tied to the residential land. Our land got split from its farmland and they auctioned the residential and farmland sections separately. The tax office got the residential land and JA the farmland. JA and the nougyou inkai got into a bit of a spat apparently as JA wanted to convert the whole thing to residential before the auction, knowing that the small farmland plots would be hard to auction off. JA and us tried again recently to get them converted to residential without luck.

[VanillaEssence]

Thanks for the info. It sucks because the land is divided in such a strange way like R-F-R-F-F. Literally impossible to have anything more than a garden there. I think I’ll have to pass on this one then. I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye out to see if anything else comes up - it’s tough when you want to live in the Inaka but don’t want to drive

[farmingnoob]

Yes! Llama's videos are awesome.

I really like the idea of buying an old house and paying cash because you don't have to worry about rent or a mortgage. We foreigners need that extra piece of mind.

I check my local Akiya Bank every day but the market is really slow here. Still waiting for a good property to come up.

[Zasso Nouka]

It maybe worth speaking to your local Akiya bank staff and telling them what you are looking for. Our local council doesn't generally advertise old farm houses as they don't think anyone would be interested in them but if they have someone. I know of several people in our city that got old farmhouses by directly contacting the city council and registering their interest. Probably depends on how proactive the staff are at your local Akiya bank.

[farmingnoob]

Yes I really do need to officially sign up for the akiya bank. My wife, however, isn't too interested in it.