Buying an akiya in Japan: the statutes that decide what may be done with a vacant house

What these statutes say about who may own

The Japanese word is akiya to (空家等), and the statute built around it is the Act on Special Measures concerning the Promotion of Vacant Houses Countermeasures, Act No. 127 of 2014. We read that act and the act that lets inherited land be given to the State — the operative articles and the supplementary provisions returned with them — and searched both for the words 国籍 (nationality), 日本国民 (Japanese national), 外国人 (foreigner) and 住所を有する (has an address). Each of those four strings occurs zero times in each of the two acts, on either count. The strings were counted over the text of the articles as e-Gov returns them, with whitespace removed and ruby readings dropped.

That is a measurement of two statutes, and it is not a statement about Japanese law as a whole. Two of the sections below describe requirements that fall on a purchaser irrespective of nationality and that bite hardest on the kind of rural plot a vacant house sits on: the permission an agricultural committee must give before farmland changes hands, and a notification that has to reach the Prime Minister before certain contracts are concluded. A separate obligation to declare nationality when registering ownership takes effect on 5 October 2026 and is described in our guide to the property register.

What the Act calls a vacant house, and the tier added in 2023

The definition is wider than the English word "vacant" suggests, and it swallows the land as well as the building.

Three things follow from that sentence. The test is 居住その他の使用がなされていないことが常態 — that no living in it or other use is the habitual state — rather than abandonment or dereliction. The definition reaches その敷地, the site, and the bracket pulls in standing trees and other things fixed to the land, so the whole plot is inside the Act and not only the structure. And property owned or managed by the State or a local authority is carved out.

Above that sits tokutei akiya to (特定空家等), defined in Art. 2(2) by four states. Two of them turn on what would follow if the property were left as it is: a risk of collapse or other serious danger to safety, and a risk of becoming seriously harmful to sanitation. The other two are a state that seriously spoils the landscape through the absence of proper management, and a residual category of states in which leaving the property alone is inappropriate for preserving the living environment around it.

Between the two, since 13 December 2023, sits a third tier. It is defined not in the definitions article but inside the operative provision that creates it.

A kanri fuzen akiya to (管理不全空家等) is a vacant house that is not yet a specified vacant house but is in a state where, left alone, it risks becoming one. The next section is about why that tier matters in money.

The recommendation that removes the residential-land reduction

Land under a dwelling is taxed on a reduced base. Article 349-3-2 of the Local Tax Act sets that base at one third of the value in paragraph (1), and at one sixth in paragraph (2) for shokibo jutaku yochi (小規模住宅用地), which paragraph (2) item (i) defines as residential land of 200 square metres or less, item (ii) applying the same 200-square-metre test per dwelling where the land is larger. Our guide to property tax works through what happens to the bill when that reduction is lost, and the arithmetic is not a simple multiplication by six.

The reduction is removed by a bracket inside the definition of residential land in paragraph (1). Among the things that bracket excludes from the term are two that concern vacant houses; the passage quoted here begins partway through it, after an earlier exclusion that is not about vacant houses at all.

What triggers the exclusion is the kankoku (勧告), the recommendation. It is not the earlier guidance stage, and it is not the order that may come afterwards. Once a recommendation has been made under Art. 13(2) for a poorly managed vacant house, or under Art. 22(2) for a specified vacant house, the site stops being residential land for the purposes of that article.

What a municipality may do, and in what order

Article 22 sets out the sequence for a specified vacant house. It runs in stages, and each stage is a precondition for the next.

Two further paragraphs are worth knowing about. Article 22(13) requires the mayor to publicise an order — 公示しなければならない — by putting up a sign or by another method the ministries prescribe; what is left to the mayor is the method, and Article 22(14) is the discretion to put the sign on the property itself, which the owner must not refuse or obstruct. Article 22(15) disapplies Chapter III of the Administrative Procedure Act to an order under Article 22(3), except for its Articles 12 and 14 — the procedure in Article 22 itself takes its place.

Article 30 attaches two non-criminal penalties, both karyo (過料). Violating an order under Article 22(3) carries up to ¥500,000. Failing to report, reporting falsely, or refusing, obstructing or evading the on-site inspection under Article 9(2) carries up to ¥200,000. That inspection power is itself limited: Article 9(3) requires five days' advance notice to the owner unless notifying them is difficult, Article 9(4) requires the inspector to carry and produce identification, and Article 9(5) provides that the power is not to be construed as granted for criminal investigation.

Frontage, and why some sites cannot be built on again

A very cheap plot can be worth little because the Building Standards Act will not allow a replacement building on it. The rule is one sentence.

Two metres of contact with a doro (道路). The work is done by that word, which Article 42(1) defines for this chapter as a way 幅員四メートル — four metres wide — or more, six metres inside an area the specified administrative agency has designated after consulting the prefectural city planning council, and falling within one of five categories: a road under the Road Act; a road under the City Planning Act, the Land Readjustment Act and five other named statutes; a way already in existence when the chapter came to apply to the area; a planned road the agency has designated as due to be executed within two years; and a privately built way meeting cabinet order standards whose position the agency has designated on the application of the person building it.

A lane that is narrower than four metres is not a road under Article 42(1), and a site fronting only such a lane does not meet Article 43(1) through that route. Article 42(2) brings certain narrower ways inside the definition: a way under four metres wide, with buildings already standing along it when the chapter came to apply, that the specified administrative agency has designated, is deemed to be a road, and the boundary is deemed to run two metres from its centreline — three metres inside a designated area, unless the agency finds two metres raises no difficulty, and a proviso puts the line differently again where the way runs along a cliff, a river or a railway. Land between the deemed boundary and the actual edge of the lane is the reason a rebuilt house can end up smaller than the one it replaced.

Article 43(2) then disapplies the frontage rule in two cases.

• ■Article 43(2)(i), the certification route. A site with two metres or more of contact with a way 幅員四メートル以上 that is not a road, meeting ministry standards for safety in evacuation and passage, where the building is one of few users under ministry standards on its use and scale, and the specified administrative agency finds no impediment as to traffic, safety, fire prevention and sanitation.
• ■Article 43(2)(ii), the permission route. A building with wide open space around its site, or meeting other ministry standards, which the specified administrative agency has permitted on the same four findings and 建築審査会の同意を得て — with the consent of the building examination committee.

Article 43(3) runs the other way. A local authority may by ordinance add requirements — the width of the road the site must front, the length of the contact, and other restrictions on the relationship between site, building and road — for five listed categories, which include buildings of three or more storeys, those over 1,000 square metres in total floor area, and buildings whose site fronts only a fukurojijo doro (袋路状道路), a dead-end road, where the total floor area exceeds 150 square metres, detached houses excepted.

The 2023 route that reaches a 1.8-metre lane

Among the fourteen articles added on 13 December 2023 is one that changes the frontage rule itself, inside designated areas. Article 7(3) lets a municipality that has drawn up a vacant houses countermeasure plan mark out a akiya to katsuyo sokushin kuiki (空家等活用促進区域), a vacant house utilisation promotion area, within five kinds of existing zone: a central urban area under the Act on Vitalization of Central Urban Areas, a regional revitalisation base or a regional housing estate revitalisation area under the Regional Revitalisation Act, a priority area under the Act on Maintenance and Improvement of Historic Landscape, and a residual category of areas that the ministries specify by ordinance as functioning as a base for economic and social activity in the municipality.

Inside such an area, the plan may set a shikichi tokurei tekiyo yoken (敷地特例適用要件), and Article 7(6) says what kind of building it may be set for.

The bracket is the point. The requirement may be set for a building whose site has two metres or more of contact with a way of 一・八メートル以上四メートル未満 — 1.8 metres or more and under four metres — that is not a road within Article 43(1) of the Building Standards Act. Article 17(1) then rewrites Article 43(2)(i) of that Act, once the plan has been published under Article 7(12), so that a building meeting the site special requirement qualifies under that limb. Article 17(2) does the same for the provisos to Article 48(1) to (13), the use-zone restrictions, where the plan sets a yoto tokurei tekiyo yoken (用途特例適用要件).

This is conditional in several ways at once, and the conditions are in the statute. The municipality must have made a plan and published it. Article 7(9) requires prior consultation with the specified administrative agency that holds the certification and permission powers, and for the use special requirement that agency's consent as well, which Article 7(10) says it may give where it finds the use unavoidable for promoting economic and social activity in the area. Article 7(8) requires a municipality other than a designated city or core city to consult the prefectural governor first where the promotion area includes an urbanisation control area. Whether any given municipality has done any of this is a question about that municipality, and we have not surveyed them.

Urbanisation control areas

A cheap house in the countryside may sit in a shigaika chosei kuiki (市街化調整区域), an urbanisation control area, which is the zoning designed to hold development back. Article 43(1) of the City Planning Act states the restriction on building there, outside any development area for which permission has been granted.

The permission of the prefectural governor is needed not only to build anew but to reconstruct a building, and to change its use. Five exceptions follow in the items: works executed as a city planning project, emergency measures for a disaster, temporary buildings, works on land where a development listed in Article 29(1)(ix) or specified by cabinet order has been carried out, and ordinary management, minor acts and other acts specified by cabinet order. Article 43(2) provides that the criteria for the permission are set by cabinet order following those for development permission in Articles 33 and 34. Article 29(1)(ii), referred to in Article 43(1), covers buildings for agriculture, forestry or fishery specified by cabinet order and dwellings for those who carry on those businesses.

Farmland that comes with the house

A rural plot can include a field, and a field is governed by its own act. Article 2(1) of the Farmland Act defines nochi (農地) as 耕作の目的に供される土地, land put to the purpose of cultivation. The test is what the land is used for, not what a register or a contract calls it.

Article 3(1) requires the permission of the nogyo iinkai (農業委員会), the agricultural committee, before ownership of farmland is transferred, or a leasehold or other right of use and profit over it is created or transferred. A list of exceptions follows in the items, numbered to item (xvi) with item (ii) deleted and three branch-numbered items inserted, of which item (xii) covers division of an estate, and certain distributions of property made by a court judgment or by conciliation — inheriting farmland and buying it are therefore different cases under this article. Article 3(2) then lists the grounds on which permission cannot be given. That paragraph carries a proviso setting out cases in which those grounds do not apply; among them are cases falling within items (i), (ii) and (iv) where 政令で定める相当の事由, reasonable grounds prescribed by cabinet order, exist. Article 3(3) separately lets the committee give permission notwithstanding items (ii) and (iv) where a lease or a loan for use is being created and all three of its requirements are met. Two of the grounds turn on the acquirer rather than the land: item (i), where the acquirer or their household would not be found to use efficiently all of the farmland and saiso hobokuchi (採草放牧地) — which Article 2(1) defines as land other than farmland that is put mainly to the purpose of cutting grass, or of grazing livestock, for a cultivation or livestock-raising business — that they would hold after the acquisition, judged on machinery, the number and placement of people doing the farm work, compliance with agricultural legislation and other such matters — the article says 等からみて, so the list is an open one; and item (iv), which excludes a farmland-holding qualified corporation and applies where the acquirer or their household would not be found to engage 常時従事, at all times, in the farm work their farming after the acquisition requires.

What happens if the permission is not obtained is short.

The act produces no effect. Article 64(i) adds a penalty for violating Article 3(1) of up to three years' kokinkei (拘禁刑), the unified custodial sentence, or a fine of up to ¥3,000,000.

A filing duty that runs before the contract

Act No. 84 of 2021 lets the Prime Minister designate a chushi kuiki (注視区域), a watch area, under Article 5(1), covering land within roughly one kilometre of the perimeter of an important facility — Self-Defence Forces and related facilities, Japan Coast Guard facilities, and life-related facilities specified by cabinet order — or within a border island area. Article 12(1) lets a watch area be further designated a tokubetsu chushi kuiki (特別注視区域), a special watch area, where the facility or the island is one whose function is particularly important, or is easy to impair, and is in either case difficult to substitute with another. Both designations take effect by publication in the official gazette.

Inside a special watch area, Article 13(1) attaches a duty to the contract itself. Where a contract transferring or creating ownership of land or a building is to be concluded, the parties must notify the Prime Minister あらかじめ — in advance — of their names and addresses, the location and area of the property, the type and content of the right, and the intended use of the property after the transfer. The duty falls on 当事者, the parties, which is both of them. Article 4 of the enforcement order fixes the size below which no notification is required at 200 square metres, floor area in the case of a building, so property of 200 square metres or more is within the size that attracts the duty. Size is not the only carve-out: Article 13(1) also excludes a contract where the party taking the right is the State, a local authority or another person cabinet order specifies, and any other contract cabinet order specifies as posing little risk that the property will be used to impair the facility or the island. Article 13(3) allows two weeks after the event instead, for contracts concluded through mediation under the Civil Conciliation Act and the other causes cabinet order specifies.

Article 26 makes concluding such a contract without the notification, failing to give the after-the-event notification, or giving a false notification, punishable by up to six months' custodial sentence or a fine of up to ¥1,000,000. Whether any particular plot lies inside a designated area is a matter of the gazette and the published maps, which this page has not examined.

Giving the land to the State, and why a building blocks it

Act No. 25 of 2021 created a route by which land can be handed to the State. Two limits in Article 2 decide who may use it at all, and both of them bear on a vacant house.

The first limit is how the land was acquired. Article 1 defines 相続等 as inheritance, or a bequest made to an heir. A person who bought the land cannot apply. Article 2(2) softens this only for co-ownership: where land is co-owned, all co-owners must apply together, and a co-owner who acquired their whole share by some route other than inheritance may join in provided a co-owner who did acquire by inheritance applies with them.

The second limit is the building. Land on which a building stands cannot be the subject of an application at all. For a vacant house, that means the route is closed until the house is gone — and the demolition is the owner's to arrange and to pay for. The other four categories in Article 2(3) are land with a security interest or a right of use and profit over it, land including a passage or other land specified by cabinet order as intended for use by others (Article 2 of the enforcement order lists land currently used as a passage, land within a graveyard, precincts of a religious corporation, and land currently used for water supply, drainage channels or reservoirs), land contaminated by specified hazardous substances above the ministry standard, and land whose boundaries are unclear or which is otherwise the subject of a dispute as to the existence, the holder or the extent of the ownership.

Clearing those hurdles gets an application, not an approval. Article 4 requires the Minister of Justice to reject an application made without standing, made in breach of Article 2(3) or Article 3, or where the applicant refuses the factual investigation without justifiable grounds. Article 5(1) then lists five grounds on which approval must be withheld, including a cliff whose management would take excessive cost or effort — Article 4(1) of the enforcement order defines that as a slope of 30 degrees or more together with a height of 5 metres or more — objects on the surface or underground that obstruct ordinary management or disposal, land that cannot be managed or disposed of without litigation, and a residual cabinet order category. Article 5(2) makes the decision parcel by parcel.

The two payments, and what they come to

Article 3(2) requires a fee, set by Article 3 of the enforcement order at ¥14,000 for each parcel applied for. Article 10(1) then requires a futankin (負担金), a contribution, calculated by cabinet order by reference to ten years of the standard cost of managing State land of that kind. Article 5(1) of the enforcement order sets it in four categories, and Article 5(2) rounds the result down to the nearest ¥1,000.

Applying item (i) to a building plot of 150 square metres inside an urbanisation promotion area gives 150 × ¥2,450 + ¥303,000 = ¥670,500, which Article 5(2) rounds down to ¥670,000. Applying item (iii) to 3,000 square metres of forest gives 3,000 × ¥17 + ¥248,000 = ¥299,000. Those two figures are our own arithmetic on areas we chose, shown to make the formulas concrete. Note where item (iv) leaves building land that is inside neither an urbanisation promotion area nor, where the area has no zoning division, a use district: outside the first three categories, and so on the flat ¥200,000 rather than on the banded calculation, whatever its size.

Article 10(3) gives the applicant 30 days from the notice of the amount to pay, failing which the approval loses its effect. Article 11(1) provides that ownership vests in the State at the moment of payment, and Article 13(1) lets the Minister revoke an approval obtained by fraud or other wrongful means. Whether inherited property has to be registered first, and by when, is a separate question addressed in our guide to inheritance.

Support corporations, and an amendment on 3 September 2026

Article 23(1) lets a mayor designate, on application, an akiya to kanri katsuyo shien hojin (空家等管理活用支援法人), a vacant house management and utilisation support corporation. Article 24 lists what such a corporation does: providing information, consultation and other assistance to owners and to those seeking to manage or use a vacant house; on commission, checking the state of a property periodically and carrying out renovation work for its use; on commission, searching for the owner; research; public awareness; and a residual category.

Article 23(1) as in force today lists the bodies eligible for designation as specified non-profit corporations under the Act on Promotion of Specified Non-profit Activities, general incorporated associations, general incorporated foundations, and companies whose purpose is activity to manage or use vacant houses.

What this page does not settle

• ■No case law has been read. Every statement above is a reading of statutory and regulatory text. Nothing here reports how a court has construed any of it.
• ■Ordinances are not covered. Article 43(3) of the Building Standards Act, Article 702(1) of the Local Tax Act and several provisions of the Akiya Act operate through municipal ordinances and municipal plans. Those differ between municipalities and we have not surveyed them, so nothing here describes the position anywhere in particular.
• ■Support schemes and demolition costs are not covered. Subsidies for demolition or renovation are set by individual municipalities. We found no primary source giving a national figure for the cost of demolishing a house and have therefore put none here.
• ■One statute has been named but not read. The Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (外国為替及び外国貿易法) is a separate regime with its own reporting provisions covering certain transactions by non-residents. We have not examined it, and nothing on this page says whether any of it applies to a purchase of property.
• ■The dates come from one source. The comparisons across asof dates, and the counts of articles and of words, are measurements of what e-Gov returns. We have not checked them against the official gazette, so an error in e-Gov's data would be an error here.
• ■Our English is a reference rendering. Japanese statutory terms are given in Japanese with a reading and a plain-English gloss on first use. The Japanese text governs.

Our thanks to anyone who has read this far. Seven acts, two cabinet orders and a long run of article numbers is a lot to ask of a reader, and the time spent on it is appreciated. The detail was assembled for one purpose: so that the right question can be put to the municipal office, the agricultural committee or the qualified professional who is actually able to answer it.

Sources

Every statutory and regulatory text below was read on 28 August 2026 through the e-Gov law search service maintained by Japan's Digital Agency, at the version in force on that date, except where a different asof date is stated because the point being made is a change between two versions. Where a date or a count is our own measurement rather than something printed in a source, we say so both here and in the body.