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Frame from How We Bought Our Abandoned House in Japan | Process, Costs, Risks, Finance, How to Find One Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

How We Bought Our Abandoned House in Japan | Process, Costs, Risks, Finance, How to Find One

Tokyo Llama
Documentaries
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this documentary3 months2020–2024 score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Recommended as a candid look at the real costs and paperwork of buying and renovating an abandoned Japanese home.

The Tokyo Llama channel details how the creators found and bought an abandoned akiya minka house in Japan. It covers process, costs, taxes, financing and risks of renovation.

“this video goes through the costs of buying an abandoned house in Japan” (HN, 2020)

1 strong recommendations · 2 recommendations · 1 citations · Documentaries

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@nataz Aug 2023 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Exploring the eerie beauty of Japan's abandoned villages
If you are interested in buying an abandoned home in the Japan countryside highly recommend the YouTube channel Tokyo Llama. He's spent the last four years renovating a beautiful traditional style Japanese house and property about an hour outside of Tokyo. He talks about the renovation aspects, taxes, paperwork process, and the pros and cons of doing this with a family. Lots of videos the watch. [this video]
Renovating a traditional Japanese house: taxes, paperwork, family tradeoffs
@rwmj Aug 2020 Recommends
on HN thread 1-Euro Houses
On a similar point, this video goes through the costs of buying an abandoned house in Japan: [this video] To be fair, although there are a lot of "extras", the sums involved still seemed relatively small.
Costs of buying an abandoned house in Japan
@shagie Jan 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Need a Home for 80k Puzzles? Try an Italian Castle
Should head over to Japan... Exploring the eerie beauty of Japan's abandoned villages --- [link] -- [link] 171 points | 4 months ago | 126 comments The top comment by nataz: > If you are interested in buying an abandoned home in the Japan countryside highly recommend the YouTube channel Tokyo Llama. He's spent the last four years renovating a beautiful traditional style Japanese house and property about an hour outside of Tokyo. He talks about the renovation aspects, taxes, paperwork process, and the pros and cons of doing this with a family. Lots of videos the watch. > [this video]
Renovating an abandoned Japanese countryside home

Citations, criticism and jokes

@gusgus01 Feb 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Honest guide to Vanlife in Japan after a year
Well there's at least one person who has: [this video] He mentions renovation companies as well as builders who will undertake renovations. He has many more videos detailing the process. However, being a youtuber does open up possibilities that aren't common.
Youtuber's process of buying and renovating a Japanese house

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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