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Japanese houses that cost just US$28,000 thrill the Internet, also break its heart

Casey Baseel Sep 24, 2020
Tweet

“If I can get a house for the same price as a car, I’m buying the house.”

2.98 million sounds like a big number, and depending on what you’re talking about, it definitely can be. If you had 2.98 million things to do, for example, you’d be soul-crushingly busy, and 2.98 million cheeseburgers would be a meal beyond even our gluttonous capabilities.

But 2.98 million yen is an extremely tiny number if talking about how much to spend to buy a house, since it works out to just over US$28,000. And yet, that’s the miraculously low price of the home shown in this tweet from Japanese Twitter user @CaptainJacksan.

なんと、今は税別298万円から新築を建てられる時代なのか・・！！

・10.25坪
・2DK
・防音防熱
・全国対応

1人2人くらいならもうこれでよくない？古屋付きの立地いい土地買って、298万円で再建築すればその後一生家賃無料やんけ！

20代でこれに気付いたら結構QOL上がるやろなぁ。 pic.twitter.com/QFaAxL92hM

— CJ社長@築古戸建て投資 x 不動産業 x 情報発信 (@CaptainJacksan) September 18, 2020

At that price, it’s obviously not a palatially spacious house, but with roughly 33.9 square meters (346.9 square feet) of floor space, it’s far bigger than the apartments in which most single people in Japan reside, and actually about the size of the apartments that most young married couples, even some with a young child, live in.

And it’s not a primitive shack, either. It’s got full kitchen and bathroom facilities, plus insulated, soundproofed walls.

Again, no one would mistake this for a luxury mansion, and the 2.98 million-yen price tag is just for the house, meaning the cost of purchasing or leasing the land you want to build it on would separate. A price like that is still an incredible bargain, though, and online reactions to @CaptainJacksan’s tweet included:

“This is the greatest deal ever…and even hat feels like an understatement.”
“This would be plenty of space for me.”
“With families getting smaller, this would be a perfect fit for a lot of people.”
“I wouldn’t even need to take out a loan to buy it!”
“If I can get a house for the same price as a car, I’m buying the house.”
“That’s all the space I’d need for me and the person I love to live happily together.”

These ultra affordable homes were created by Kaiko Home, a real estate developer in Ibaraki Prefecture, which began building them back in 2012. Unfortunately, though, it turns out that the company no longer offers them, and may not even exist as its own entity anymore. While there’s still a website for the 2.98 million-yen houses, it’s now just a top page with a password prompt, and nothing else.

However, Kaiko Home’s parent company, Kaiko Fudosan (“Kaiko Realty”) is still around, and has homes for sale in the town of Kashima. They may not be new, and they may not be 2.98 million yen, but they’re still incredibly inexpensive, with, for example, a 45.54-square meter two-bedroom house for just 3.8 million yen (US$35,800).

▼ Kaiko Fudosan houses ranging in price from 3.8 to 6.8 million yen

So if you’ve ever wanted to live the simple life in a Japanese coastal town, that dream might be financially closer than you knew.

Sources: Twitter/CaptainJacksan (1, 2) via Hachima Kiko, Kaiko Fudosan, Kaiko Home
Top image: Twitter/CaptainJacksan
Insert images: Twitter/CaptainJacksan, Kaiko Fudosan
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