I live in a “hot” area of Minato-ku. There are a few houses on my block/Chome that seem completely abandoned. Overgrown plants, rusted bikes, run down building, lights never on, etc. I had my wife write an intro letter in Japanese and dropped it in the mailbox a month ago and no reply. What are the procedures on how to enquire with the ward office about this house? Is there any public database where I can get at least the name of the owner? I’m willing to pay market price for the land, as land is scarce in the neighborhood. Has anyone done this before – make a direct offer for a presumed abandoned house in central Tokyo that isn’t publicly listed?
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Haha, good luck. These are famously difficult to track down the owner.
Yea… talk to the local estate agent, usual reply is family fighting over inheritance for years
You can use this service ([https://www1.touki.or.jp/gateway.html](https://www1.touki.or.jp/gateway.html)) to find out property records for a piece of land. It’s a paid service, but the fee is tiny (around 400 yen if I recall correctly).
Real estate agents can look up the land registration to see the name and address of the person who purchased or inherited a property. That information could be decades old; the owner most likely moved several times and therefore you would need the assistance of other public offices (tax officials, etc.) to track down the owner. Difficult but not impossible.
Here is the interesting part: we real estate agents can also see how many times this information has been requested by other real estate agents! For an abandoned house in Minato Ward it could be a very high number of requests. Every real estate agency in the neighborhood would have tried to track down the owner. There are some real estate agents for developers who do this full time, trying to find properties to develop and sell.
So in this situation, the owner, if he or she is indeed alive and locatable, has probably been contacted by many agents and received many glossy offers on the land. Either the owner is waiting for the best opportunity to sell (timing the market) or is trying to keep inheritance taxes low by passing on a worthless house for the kids to redevelop as they want. As other commentators have said, families often disagree over what to do with an inherited property.
It is of course possible that the owner is a rebel who would rather turn down 20 offers from developers to sell it to an earnest individual like you. Are you the kind of charming or sincere person an old owner would want to work with? But this is Minato, not some cool under-the-radar neighborhood in a shitamachi area. So your chances are almost zero that the owner is just waiting for the right person to take over the property.
Probably an 80 year old paranoid schizophrenic living thete
I remember reading somewhere that in the 80s a man bought a forest in japan for $20 sq ft, now it’s worth $2 a sq ft. Someone wants to buy it but the seller wants $20 because that’s what they paid for it. This is unrelated to your situation but these people really do want the most bang for their buck.
If you are willing to pay market price there is other land for sale in Minato ku. A quick glance is showing listings around 1000 – 1800万JPY per tsubo. Good luck!
>Has anyone done this before
Yes many and they all failed, that’s why it is still there.
The issue is that Japan doesn’t allow for eminent domain or the ability to seize abandoned property in this context. They have to track down the owner or the owners descendants and get their approval first. Seizure may be possible if the taxes owed significantly exceeds the property value, but that could take a long time.
Pulled the record from the land registry on the property but couldn’t track the owner – not enough information. Six months later real estate agency demolished the house and listed the lot. They are much better at this game.
The problem is you won’t be able to find “whom” to pay.
Akiya empty houses issue in center of tokyo such as Minato, Meguro, Setagaya.. have been a local problem for a while and the city are struggling to find the legitimate owners of those to seizure the millions usd piece of lands. Why? People who manage to have large estate in these areas are original Tokyotees before the world war2 and probably already passed away. Their children & grandchildren scatter around the country, and either are fighting to get the inheritance, or not even bother to receive the gift since 6oku yen land will be 55%inheritance in tax means instant tax payment of 3mil usd on their heads. Reason is probably the second one, as tokyo-central tokyotees normally are financially comfortable wherever they live and wouldn’t care to go through this mendokusai legal, or just want to leave the land as it is because sentimental
If even you noticed this pot of gold, means 70 other professional landsharks in the area already have their eyes on this before you are even here.
It is completely abandoned cuz every one is working on it
You could get the most recent survey map you can put your hands on with plot numbers, then get the ownership history for that plot number or a sub-number by paying a modest fee on credit-card (few hundred yen)
If you see an abandoned house it means that it is in legal limbo. If anyone could have sold it they would.
I know of houses in the prestigious area in Yamate in Yokohama that were abandoned from the 1940s to the 1990s because the owner could not be determined.