Japan has millions of abandoned rural houses for sale.
The glut delights foreigners, who’ve been able to buy one for as little as US$23,000. But underlying the surplus are meaningful shifts in Japan’s culture. Demographic and economic patterns – including a shrinking population and migration from the countryside to cities – are combining to create a “ghost town” problem in Japan.
Japan’s 8.5 million abandoned rural homes, or akiya, have become a ‘cheap’ option for foreigner owners | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)
The Japanese word for the abandoned houses is akiya and the last official count (in 2018) was 8.5 million, so the 11 million estimate seems reasonable.
Population decline is of course part of the problem, but so is people moving to Tokyo where new housing is still being built.
Something kinda cool about Japan’s predicament is that they are giving us glimpse of what will happen in most countries, and happen soon. There will be abandoned housing, but it won’t be uniform across the nation. It will be clunky, with some towns reaching a tipping point where they become unviable, and end up as ghost towns. While ghost towns sound cool and feel like something to take advantage of, I think the 50% of Detroit’s empty houses, during a housing crisis, says it all.