What the U.S. Needs to Know About Japan's Vacant Property Crisis

Any way you measure them, Japan’s population figures are dire. The country is expected to lose more than one-third of its population by 2060, thanks largely to low birth rates and an aging populace. In 2012, according to Japan’s Statistical Yearbook, the country’s annual death-to-population ratio passed one percent. This isn’t astoundingly high: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook ranks Japan’s death rate (the deaths during a year per 1,000 population) at 54th out of 225 countries. But the trouble comes when you factor in the fertility rate: Japan currently has the third-lowest recorded birth rate in the world.

All of this has already had a profound effect on Japanese housing. Between the mid-1990s and 2013, the number of vacant or abandoned properties in Japan doubled. These neglected structures now make up an estimated 13.5 percent of the country’s housing stock. The phenomenon of abandoned Japanese homes is so widespread that people have begun writing poetry about it. When the Tokyo Association of Housing and Land Investigators put out a call for satirical haikus on the topic, it received 4,000 responses. “Where we were born, vacant houses gather, for legacy’s sake,” read one. "Watch out! Earthquakes and Thunder! Burning Vacant Homes,” read another.