# Japanese Government Giving Away Free Homes?



## Rmoon3

Hello All!

First time posting here, so I'll keep it short. A CNBC article came across my LinkedIn feed about a month back claiming that the Japanese government is giving away free homes due to a vacancy crisis. 

Doing some further research, I found quite a few sites (all in Japanese) with homes priced below 1 million yen. Many of them were free. Sorry I cannot post links yet, as this is my first post. 

Has anyone else heard about this? Is it legitimate?

Thanks!
Rocky


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## Lost in space

Rmoon3 said:


> Hello All!
> 
> First time posting here, so I'll keep it short. A CNBC article came across my LinkedIn feed about a month back claiming that the Japanese government is giving away free homes due to a vacancy crisis.
> 
> Doing some further research, I found quite a few sites (all in Japanese) with homes priced below 1 million yen. Many of them were free. Sorry I cannot post links yet, as this is my first post.
> 
> Has anyone else heard about this? Is it legitimate?
> 
> Thanks!
> Rocky


Sounds too good to be true... below a million yen (jap million or rest of the world milion?) either way cheap, my house alone was around ¥50,000,000


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## Rmoon3

Yeah, I am unsure, but I have found a couple of places that look legit. But I still cannot post links. A quick google search of Japan giving away homes brings up a lot of articles, though. Including LinkedIn and CNBC.


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## Xelchan

I looked this up when you posted it. Some of the houses require you to pay back taxes on the house though the house itself is “free”. Some are truly free, but there is no guarantee about the state of the house (old, dilapitated, needs to be rebuilt, etc) or the house is so rurally located that no one is interested in it. Some of them are local governments trying to entice young families in (cheap rent to own basically). There are a bunch of different “free” houses, but there might be hidden costs. So just be aware.


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## donpaulo

So many of these "free" houses are located in areas without any public transport, have no insulation nor modern plumbing just to name a few issues.
You will then need to pay to upgrade the property which in Japan can be EXTREMELY expensive in both labor and material costs.
Then the town will start coming for the property taxes.
Will this program suit some people ? yes certainly but they are vacant for a reason.


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