Repairs Keep Surfacing After You Buy a Kominka — The Information Gap Born of Inheritance and Aging

1. Law (Real Estate Transaction Act)Disclosure covers whether facilities exist, not whether the well keeps water or drainage keeps working

2. SellerAbout 60% of vacant homes come by inheritance and death; only 23% of households prepared beforehand, and distant, aging owners do not know the condition

3. Distribution (vacant-house banks)Even among households that resolved a vacant home, only 3.3% used a bank; most sales are private, outside the warranty protection that applies when a real-estate agent is the seller

Repairs surfacing after purchase are not a matter of individual dishonesty. Disclosure stops at whether facilities exist, sellers themselves do not know the condition amid inheritance and aging, and official channels reach only a sliver of actual properties. Three layers have failed to keep pace with the reality of vacant homes.

Only After Moving In Did the Well Run Dry for Two Months

In the mountains of Nara Prefecture, a woman in her thirties bought an old house and moved in with her husband. As FIRST-HAND Local reports from the field, after the move the well ran dry for two full months, and she bathed at an acquaintance's home. Damp brought mold, and drainage failures surfaced little by little through daily use. Re-digging the well cost on the order of a million yen, and clearing grass costs hundreds of thousands of yen each year. None of it showed at the pre-purchase viewing; the need for repairs appeared only once she lived there.

What Buyers Face Is a Pile of Neglected Homes

This is not this newcomer's misfortune alone. Japan holds 9.002 million vacant homes[1], at a vacancy rate of 13.8%[1], both record highs. And narrowing to vacant detached houses, the kind closest to an old house, 80.9% (2.851 million) of the 3.523 million are "vacant homes other than those for rent, for sale, or secondary"[1], that is, no tenant or buyer is being sought and they have been left for a long time. What a buyer faces is this pile of homes.

Most Inherited Vacant Homes Are Already Damaged

That the Nara case is no exception shows in the statistics. Among vacant homes passed on by inheritance, 21.2% have structural defects, 47.1% have partial decay or damage inside or outside, and 3.5% have decay or damage throughout[2]. Together, more than seven in ten already carry some injury. Those with none come to only 28.2%[2]. They are old, too: 20.4% were built in 1950 or earlier, 26.4% between 1951 and 1970, and 26.4% between 1971 and 1980[2], which the ministry sums up as more than seven in ten built in 1980 or earlier. Japan's current earthquake-resistance standard applies to building confirmations from June 1981, so a house built in 1980 or earlier predates that standard. A pre-purchase viewing shows only a sliver of this damage.

The Law Asks About the "State of Provision," and Stops There

Why do the flaws show only after buying? One reason is that the law's disclosure range is narrow. The Building Lots and Buildings Transaction Business Act requires that, before a contract is concluded, the "state of provision" be explained for the facilities supplying drinking water, electricity and gas, and for drainage. What it asks for is whether the facilities are in place. Whether that well keeps water, or that drainage keeps working, falls outside the text.

Inspect the Building and the Well and Drainage Still Fall Outside

An inspection of an existing building's condition does not fill this gap either. What the law requires is disclosure of whether an inspection was done and, if it was, a summary of the results. Doing it at all is voluntary. And the inspection covers only the parts principal to structural strength and the parts that keep rainwater out. Even where an inspection has been done, a well running dry and a drainage failure never appear in it.

The 2-Year Protection After Handover Applies Only When an Agent Sells

The seller's liability once defects appear after handover is also thin from the buyer's side. The Act bars clauses disadvantageous to the buyer, except a clause setting a period of two years or more from the day of handover. But this rule covers only sales where a licensed agent is itself the seller. Most inherited vacant homes are sold by individuals, and the rule does not reach them.

Sellers Do Not Know the Condition Either

Sellers, for their part, often do not know the property's condition. About 60% (57.9%) of vacant homes are acquired by inheritance[2]. Among those inherited homes, just under 60% (58.3%) were triggered by the owner's death[2]. Households that made any preparation before inheriting come to only 23.0%[2]. Many owners live far away and are elderly. Rather than hiding things in bad faith, the seller too does not grasp the lived condition.

Whether anything was prepared shows in what happens next. Vacant homes where nothing was done before the inheritance are held as vacant homes in 45.1% of cases[2], roughly 1.5 times the 29.4%[2] where something was done. And what was done is modest: the most common step is "a conversation with the person to be inherited from" at 16.7%, with help drafting a will at 1.8% and use of guardianship or family trusts at 1.3%. Houses passed on without even a conversation are left outside the market, damage and all.

Who Can Actually Sell It Is Unclear

The title itself, too, is often unsettled. Registration of inherited real estate became mandatory in April 2024, with a fine of up to 100,000 yen for failing to apply within three years[3] of learning of the acquisition, but the longer a property has been left, the more heirs pile up across generations, and who can sell it grows unclear.

Only 3.3% Registered With a Vacant-House Bank

The mechanisms meant to fill the information gap barely reach actual properties either. The ministry asked the 228,000 households[4] that resolved a vacant home over the past year what they did about it (multiple answers allowed). The most common answer is "did nothing in particular," at 38.7%[4]. "Registered with a vacant-house bank" comes to 3.3%[4]. That figure asks only whether they registered, so the share actually sold through a bank is lower still. A scheme that exists but never reaches the people it is for is not confined to vacant homes; the common structure behind populations policy fails to reach（このサイトの記事） sets this alongside take-up rates in other fields.

The Party Standing in the Middle Is a Private Agent

The second most common answer in the same survey is "had a real-estate agent look for a tenant or buyer," at 29.2%[4], roughly nine times the share that registered with a bank. "Consulted the government" comes to 2.8%, and "used a public subsidy or support scheme" to 1.9%[4]. When a vacant home does move, the party standing in the middle is a private broker, not a public desk. And as long as the seller is an individual, the two-year protection after handover does not apply to the deal.

The National Bank Lists 19,626 Homes

The national vacant-house bank has 1,148 participating municipalities, but only 744 actually list properties[5]. Listings currently stand at 19,626 homes[6], a total across the two operators that also counts the same property twice. Against 2.85 million neglected vacant houses, that is at most 0.7%. Cumulative deals since launch come to about 26,000[5].

The Top Outcome Is Demolition, Not a Sale

Vacant homes rarely move at all. Among vacant homes with no intended use, 14.8%[2] stopped being vacant over the past year; the remaining 85.2% did not. Even where one was resolved, the leading reason is "demolished it," at 22.7%[2], followed by "rented it out" and "the owner or a relative moved in" at 15.5% each. Selling does not make the top three. Asked about future intentions, the most common answer is "keep holding it as a vacant home, including as storage," at 40.6%[2]. Four in ten owners are not thinking of the market at all.

Three Layers, One Over Another

Here three layers come into view, one over another. The law stops at the state of provision of facilities and does not reach their performance or reliability. The seller lets the property go without knowing its condition, amid inheritance and aging. And the official distribution channel connects to only a fraction of actual properties. That repairs keep surfacing after purchase is the consequence of these three layers failing to keep pace with the reality of vacant homes, where inheritance and aging advance.

Measures to encourage migration and the use of vacant homes are spreading. But a piecemeal fix, such as slightly thickening the disclosure of key matters, will not fill this gap. How can the damage in a property left dormant with titles unsettled by inheritance be brought into the open before a transaction? Who investigates the condition, who conveys it to the buyer, who puts it into distribution? Leave that allocation undecided, and a vacant home, a regional resource, keeps sleeping as a negative legacy. What resolves the structure of repairs surfacing after purchase is not a tweak to the duty of disclosure, but the design of a mechanism that draws the real condition out ahead of the transaction.

Further Reading

• 老いる家 崩れる街 住宅過剰社会の末路 (Aging Houses, Crumbling Streets: The End of an Over-Housing Society)（外部サイト、新しいタブで開きます） (Chie Nozawa, Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, 2016) — a study of the over-housing society, where vacant homes rise even as land development and tower blocks keep going, read from the side of institutions. (In Japanese.)

References

2023 Housing and Land Survey: Summary of Basic Tabulation on Housing and Households — Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

2024 Survey of Vacant House Owners: Report — Housing Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

About the National Vacant House and Land Bank (Participating Municipalities, Listing Municipalities, and Deals) — Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

National Vacant House and Land Bank: Participating Municipalities and Listings Over Time — Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

On the Mandatory Application for Inheritance Registration — Civil Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Justice. Ministry of Justice