An akiya is a vacant house. An akiya bank connects owners with prospective buyers or tenants; its entries can include homes, land and buildings needing work. We compared the five properties in the “new listings” strip of Tōmi’s official bank on 12 October 2026 to show what a buyer can learn from the actual offer.
Five asking prices, five different property bundles
The sample follows the homepage’s published order, rather than a search for the five cheapest houses. All five linked entries were sale offers, added between July and September 2026. These are advertised asking prices. We did not contact the owners or inspect the properties; this is a comparison of public listings, not a national price survey or confirmation that an offer is still available.
The ¥2 million Shirakaba house, No. 332 is an 85.24 m² home built in 1984, in an area of holiday homes. Its equipment list includes mains water, propane and electricity; it does not specify sewerage. That omission is a question for the contact person. It does not establish that the house has no working wastewater system.
The ¥6.3 million Otomedaira house, No. 334 is smaller, at 76.99 m², and older, built in 1973. The listing specifies mains sewerage and city gas. It also identifies an unregistered extension and says the seller will register it before delivery. The useful next step is to have the agent explain which building work that promise covers and how its completion will be reflected in the handover documents.
Neither entry tells us the price of making the house suitable for a particular household. A higher asking price can buy a different location, services or scope of pre-handover work. A lower one can still make sense, but only after the missing information and repair quotes are filled in.
A field can change who the purchase suits
The ¥5 million Sone property, No. 297 includes a house dated to 1869, several outbuildings and 1,764 m² of fields. The ¥9.8 million Kurakake property, No. 304 includes a 799 m² field and unregistered agricultural stores. The ¥10 million Haraguchi property, No. 322 combines a 1907 main house with a 1983 annex, unregistered stores and additional paddy fields, fields and forest.
All three flag an Article 3 permission application for farmland. That changes the proposition for someone who wants a holiday house and an occasional vegetable patch. The land’s recorded category and acquisition conditions have to be understood before treating every extra square metre as an uncomplicated benefit.
Tōmi’s agricultural committee explains that acquiring farmland for farming requires permission. Its listed criteria include a workable farming plan, efficient use and regular engagement in agricultural work, in principle at least 150 days a year by the acquirer or relevant household members. The old minimum-area condition was abolished in April 2023; that did not remove the other criteria.
Ask which parcels are included, whether the field is integral to the proposed sale and whether the intended buyer and use can satisfy the applicable process. Obtain the committee’s answer before assuming a property bundle can be split or a field can become a garden, parking area or building site. The three flags in this sample describe three offers; they do not tell us what share of Japan’s akiya come with farmland.
Renovation aid follows the way you plan to live
Tōmi’s original user-registration form separates permanent residence, periodic use and “other.” It also asks whether the applicant wants to buy or rent and at what price. The bank therefore records more than one intended pattern of use.
The city’s published renovation-aid conditions are narrower. The buyer must be an eligible migrant purchasing a bank-registered house for their own residence, have no unpaid city taxes and be able to live in the subsidised home for at least ten years. The base support is up to two-thirds of eligible renovation expenditure, capped at ¥300,000, with specified additions for eligible younger household heads and dependent children.
That grant cannot simply be deducted from every advertised price. A seasonal-home plan does not satisfy the ten-year residential requirement by itself. The amount also applies to eligible repair expenditure, not automatically to the acquisition cost. Applications must precede the work. These are the published rules checked on 12 October; confirm eligibility, current funding and the proposed work with the city before including an award in the budget.
For someone considering a shorter stay, our Japan digital nomad visa guide deals with a separate question: the official conditions and duration of that immigration route. A housing plan needs a matching plan for actual use.
What to request before the cheap price becomes your budget
Use the listing ID in the first enquiry. The current detail pages ask prospective viewers to submit a user-registration form, then send the desired property and viewing time to the bank’s contact service. The owner or agent follows up. A listing gives you a route to a conversation; it does not finish the purchase checks.
- A complete property description. Ask for the house, extensions, stores and land parcels included in the proposed contract, and identify any promised register corrections.
- The systems that make the house usable. Confirm wastewater arrangements, functioning utilities and the findings of an independent condition inspection. An omitted line in an equipment table leaves an open question.
- A written repair scope and transaction costs. Ask for property-specific estimates, the agent’s fee, taxes and registration charges, and any costs for contents, outbuildings or ongoing land maintenance. Keep these separate from the advertised price.
- Permission and aid decisions for the actual plan. Resolve any farmland flag and ask the city about support before work begins. Budget an unconfirmed grant as zero until its availability and your eligibility are established.
An akiya bank is an information and matching service. Tōmi explicitly allows registration of houses needing repairs and says that a completed agent-mediated transaction carries a brokerage fee. Municipal publication therefore gives access to an offer, rather than a municipal certification that the house is ready to occupy.
This is the buyer-facing side of the housing problem explored in our Kyoto empty-home tax analysis. Getting unused homes into circulation leaves a second task: matching a particular property to a household able to use it. It is also distinct from Japan’s inherited-land return scheme, where qualifying heirs pay to transfer eligible land to the state and buildings are excluded.
In these five offers, the most useful comparison begins after the headline price: a present-condition holiday-area home, a seller’s registration promise, or a house tied to a farming approval. Choose the proposition you can actually complete, then ask what it will cost to make that particular place work.
