Akiya 2.0: Japan Raises Its Empty-House Renovation Grant to ¥3 Million and Makes It Truly Nationwide

Drive an hour outside any Japanese city and you start spotting them. Shuttered windows, weather-worn cedar boards, weeds finding their way through cracked engawa floors. National surveyors counted about nine million of these vacant houses—akiya—in the 2023 Housing and Land Survey, equal to 13.8 per cent of the entire housing stock. That share has nearly doubled in thirty years and, without intervention, researchers at Nomura warn it could reach a third of all homes before the next decade closes. The picture is uneven: Kanagawa keeps its vacancy just under ten per cent, yet Wakayama sits above twenty, and Tokushima is close behind. With the demographic slide of rural prefectures showing no sign of slowing, the central government faced a choice: watch the number climb or pour concrete incentives into the problem. In April 2025 it chose the second path, lifting the core renovation subsidy from two million to three million yen and, more decisively, removing the old restriction that limited cash to pilot revitalization zones. Any akiya that appears on a municipal empty-house bank can now receive funds once the renovation meets quake safety standards and adds at least one energy measure.

Why the change matters and how the numbers line up

The subsidy jump may look modest—one million extra yen—until you run it against a realistic budget. Take a two-storey kominka in Wakayama that measures a little under 120 square metres. The seller wants 1.2 million yen, mostly for the land. A builder quotes five million yen to stabilise beams, re-do wiring, add insulation and fit a small heat-pump water system. Under the old rules, two million of that renovation cost came back as a grant, leaving the owner on the hook for four point two million, counting purchase. Under Akiya 2.0, the project recovers three million instead, so the out-of-pocket shrinks to three point two million. A low-interest loan from the Housing Finance Agency, which still offers fixed rates near one per cent for quake-safe refits, carries that burden easily. At a conservative monthly rent of seventy thousand yen—a figure grounded in real bookings for similar countryside home-stays, the payback on cash drops to around three years. Hyogo shows how local governments sweeten the mix further; its rural revitalisation scheme stacks an extra half-million on top for owners under forty.

Item	Yen
Purchase price	1 200 000
Structural and seismic work	2 000 000
Insulation and heat pump	1 200 000
Plumbing and wiring	800 000
Solar-tile roof	1 000 000
Total spend	6 200 000
National grant (new ceiling)	–3 000 000
Hyogo top-up (example)	–500 000
Owner pays	2 700 000

From policy paper to lived experience

Numbers help, but stories persuade. In Tanba, Hyogo Prefecture, a young couple from Kobe bought a ninety-year-old farmhouse for a symbolic one yen after signing a relocation pledge with the municipal office. Their renovation budget reached 5.4 million yen; the new national grant, a local top-up, and an interest-free relocation loan cut the effective cost in half. Six months after completion their spare room rents on a monthly basis to digital nomads testing country life, and the couple hosts weekend fermentation workshops in the old kura storehouse. Yamagata’s land bank offers another angle. The prefecture buys empty homes outright, renovates them to code, then passes them on at cost to families willing to live full-time. Five units have gone through the pipeline since 2023, each renting within four weeks at rates about one-third above the prefectural norm. The lesson is that money and paperwork no longer block entry; the real hurdle is finding enough builders with heritage skills to keep pace.

Early signs that the market is paying attention

Google Trends registered a forty-two per cent jump in searches for the word “akiya” during the fortnight after the Cabinet announcement. Akiya Heaven, the largest portal of its kind, added seventeen hundred listings in May, its busiest month since launch in 2019. Regional banks that once fielded only sporadic renovation-loan inquiries now report a steady trickle, though the absolute numbers are still small. On the international side, the English-language Old Houses Japan newsletter grew by four thousand subscribers after the grant ceiling moved. In short, the story is travelling well beyond specialist circles and into the feed of ordinary home seekers.

Reading the small print and managing risk

Cheaper entry does not erase every headache. Many akiya conceal termite damage, hidden leaks or structural sag once floors come up, so experienced renovators add a twenty per cent contingency to any quoted budget. Boundary lines can blur in countryside plots where paper surveys predate modern GIS; buyers should hire a judicial scrivener to confirm title before they wire a deposit. Liquidity is the final caution. Selling a rural house can take months unless the property lies near a tourist corridor or a commuter rail. Patience and a small buffer for carrying costs keep projects from turning sour.

Where Mymland should focus its attention

Akiya 2.0 widens the funnel for stock and improves yields on light-touch conversions in cities where Mymland already works. Kyoto’s machiya, Kanazawa’s earthen-walled merchant homes and the hillside kominka of Okayama now enter the financial range of travellers and second-home buyers who were priced out even a year ago. Monitoring municipal banks in those districts and building relationships with local builders who understand heritage codes will put Mymland in front of the queue when the most compelling listings appear.