The Old Houses Japan Podcast

Old Houses Japan is growing. And today you get to meet the newest member of the team. Jonah Lane is a licensed real estate agent covering DC, Maryland, and Virginia. He studied at Temple University Japan. He speaks conversational Japanese. He's been traveling back to Japan annually for years — keeping a network alive, staying connected to a place that planted its roots in him early. How early?...

Not historically. Not theoretically. Right now — where in Japan are the properties worth paying attention to, and why? In this episode David and Victoria each pitch two regions they're actively excited about today. Then they challenge each other. No backing down. Victoria makes the case for Niigata — specifically Joetsu and Itoigawa in the southwest, where the Hokuriku Shinkansen access most peopl...

The purchase price is not the number. In episode four, host David and co-founder Victoria make that very clear — and they do it with a game. True or False to start. Guess the Number throughout. Victoria keeps score and has opinions about David's answers. The information is serious. The delivery is not. They cover the full cost picture of owning a traditional property in Japan — from acquisitio...

David was offered the chance to become a real estate agent in Japan twice. He said no both times. Then he spent two months back in the States, stepped away from the day-to-day, and came back with a different answer. In this episode Victoria turns the tables — she's asking the questions. David explains why he finally said yes, why he chose eXp Realty, and how real estate licensing in Japan actu...

Everyone talks about Japan's nine million empty homes. Nobody explains how you actually find them. In episode two of Old Houses Japan, host David and co-founder Victoria go behind the scenes of akiya banks — the government-run property registries that are the entry point to this world for most foreign buyers. What they are, who runs them, why they only capture an estimated five to fifteen perc...

Japan has nine million empty homes. Most of them are hidden in plain sight — on rural hillsides, at the edge of rice fields, in villages that emptied out a generation ago. Some of them are extraordinary. Century-old farmhouses with hand-cut timber frames, clay tile roofs, and engawa verandas that wrap the whole south side. And a lot of them cost less than a secondhand car. Old Houses Japan is the...

Before the properties, the grants, and the renovation budgets, who actually built Old Houses Japan, and why? Host David sits down with his co-founder and wife Victoria to tell the whole story. A teenager told no by her mom who spent six years making Japan happen anyway. A guy who went from Yu-Gi-Oh cards to the banking world before finding what he was actually meant to be doing. A proposal at the...

Japan has nine million vacant homes. One in every seven properties in the country is sitting empty — and most of the people who should know about this have never heard of it. In the first proper episode of Old Houses Japan, host David and co-founder Victoria break down the akiya situation from the ground up. Not just the number — but what's behind it, what's inside it, and what it actually looks a...