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💴 Price: 10,000 Yen (= $67 USD)

Listed for just ¥10,000, this two-story 8DK farmhouse sits on 564 m² (about 171 tsubo) of residential land in the hills north of Yakage. The 144 m² wooden main house has a run of tatami rooms, a glazed engawa across the front and a second-floor balcony that looks out over rice fields and the valley.

The sale covers more than one building. Alongside the main house, the listing mentions a second building with a 15-mat Western-style room and an 8-mat tatami room, and the photos show a dark-timber outbuilding and a storeroom. The agent pitches it for multi-generational living, and there's a spacious garden and free parking on site.

The house is vacant and available immediately, and because the agency is selling it directly, there's no brokerage fee. It suits buyers who want a large rural home to restore, with room for family or guests, and who are ready to do serious due diligence first.

The property is a small cluster of buildings on a hillside lot. This dark-timber outbuilding, with heavy tiled roof ridges, sits at the edge of the site and looks down over the village and its fields.

A single-story wing with a long glazed front faces the garden, with a bamboo-covered hillside rising behind it. The open lawn in front gives plenty of room for planting or parking.

The second-floor balcony runs along the front of the house and looks out across rice fields to the surrounding hills. It's the best seat in the house.

The main living area is a run of connected tatami rooms that open into one another with sliding doors, so the space can be one big room or several smaller ones. Furniture and household items from the previous occupants are still in place.

The largest tatami room has a dark timber ceiling and glazed doors onto the engawa. Its walls are hung with framed certificates and awards from the family who lived here.

Upstairs, a long corridor lined with shoji screens and a board ceiling leads to a lattice window at the far end.

A high-ceilinged room with exposed beams and a concrete floor connects to the living areas and is currently used for storage. There's also a storeroom with plastered earthen walls and shelving. Both are still packed with the previous household's goods.

The nearest station is Yakage on the Ibara Railway, but the listing puts it at a 98-minute walk, so plan on having a car. From Yakage, the Ibara Railway runs east to Sōja, where JR lines continue to Okayama, about an hour in total. The nearest Shinkansen stations are Shin-Kurashiki and Fukuyama, each roughly 45 minutes to an hour by car. From Okayama, the Nozomi reaches Osaka in under an hour and Tokyo in about 3 hours 15 minutes. Mikawa Elementary School is about 1.8 km from the house.

The most important item is the hazard designation. The listing places the property in a landslide Special Warning Area (red zone) and a Warning Area for debris flow, and the photos show a bamboo-covered slope directly behind the buildings. In a red zone, any new or rebuilt home has to meet reinforced construction requirements, and the designation can affect insurance and resale. Check the town's hazard map to see exactly which parts of the lot are covered before you commit.

Both buildings predate Japan's 1981 seismic standards. The register gives January 1957, while the remarks list one building as 1975 and the other as 1957 without making clear which is which, so ask the agent to confirm. The house is still full of the previous household's furniture and stored goods, so ask who clears it. Only a water supply is listed, so confirm the sewer or septic arrangement, the gas supply, and the condition of the kitchen and bathroom, which aren't shown in the photos. The listing also marks a setback as required even though the south road is 5.5 m wide, which is worth clarifying. The land is freehold and registered as residential, with no use district designated (60% coverage / 200% floor-area ratio).

Finally, ¥10,000 is the purchase price only. Budget separately for registration and scrivener fees, acquisition tax, and the renovation a farmhouse of this age will need.