Resurrecting the thread because I’ve started watching some of the content from the founder of AkiyaHub and there is growing number of people from the US West coast and Hawaii buying and fixing up homes to use as rentals, vacation homes or retirement homes.

Ignoring the visa issue, it seems there are some decent homes here there within 30-45 minutes of Tokyo, specifically the Yokohama suburbs. From the content I’ve been watching, most are in the $35,000 - $175,000 range depending on location, size and condition where the lower end homes need about $30,000-$75,000 in renovation cost depending on condition and how all out you want to go.

We’re thinking of two approaches as research has suggested the fix and flip market is difficult given the best deals are scooped up by insiders, and the STR market is very volatile - looking at Airbnb and VRBO, I see many homes near Tokyo go months without any bookings.

So that leaves us with two options:

1. Buy very cheap, renovate, and rent out annually. A total investment of $125,000 with $400 in monthly income is a less than exciting 3.8% yield on an asset that loses value every year and will take almost 30 years to earn back the acquisition cost before expenses along the way

2. Buy a cheap home that has more space with two floors, each floor having bedrooms and a bathroom where we redo the space so the main floor has 2 bedrooms, a living room, bathroom and kitchen that’s an annual rental, then the second floor is segregated as an independent space accessible either by external stairs we add or if the layout permits, stairs just inside the main entrance that we close off. The second floor has a tatami room and bathroom or maybe a small living room that we use as a vacation getaway home throughout the year

Either way it doesn’t look like a money making experience so I’m trying to figure out if I’m missing a particular angle. If we spent 45 nights a year in the vacation home and it usually costs me $125 a night at the Tokyo Marriott, the vacation home reclaims about $5,600 in cost.

Has anyone here not living full time or a significant amount of time during the year in Japan done anything like this?