A savvy Australian has managed to snap up a three bedroom home for just $30,000 despite Australia’s skyrocketing real estate prices.
A savvy Australian has managed to snap up a three bedroom home for just $30,000 despite Australia’s skyrocketing real estate prices.
But he had to look to Japan to do it.
Melbourne’s Jay Thursfield, 48, bought the home in the Japanese countryside in his wife Chihiro’s hometown in the mid east of the country, about an hour outside the capital Tokyo.
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For just $30,000, this could be yours. Picture: Instagram
Thursfield had heard about Japan’s numerous abandoned houses, known as akiya, and found one for sale in a newspaper advertisement, according to SBS Dateline.
Thursfield and his family then bought the 250 sqm three-bedroom, one-bathroom, one-guestroom house on 1800 sqm.
There are said to be around 10 million abandoned homes in Japan with many left to rot in the countryside as people move to the cities and leave the homes behind because of Japan’s high inheritance tax.
Thursfiled said it was even bigger when he visited in person than he had hoped.
‘I don’t think we could have afforded to have a place [in Australia], certainly not near my parents in inner Melbourne,’ Mr Thursfield said.
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$250,000 was spent renovating the home. Picture: SBS
Inside the home. Picture: SBS
He has spent around $250,0000 renovating the home and making it liveable again including replacing the plumbing and the wiring.
‘It wasn’t in liveable condition. It didn’t have a functioning kitchen, and the bathroom was really outdated,’ Mr Thursfield said.
The cost is well below the national media house price in Australia of $795,000 according to PropTrack.
‘An empty block of land with no house on it [in the Japanese countryside], you’re looking at around about $70,000-$80,000 Australian dollars and to build a new house would probably cost around about $200,000 Australian,’ Mr Thursfield said.
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