![]() ![]() It is a hard concept to fathom from a country like Australia where even the most remote real estate has value, but rural properties are almost worthless in Japan and start depreciating the second you buy one. Inside the 300-year-old Japanese farmhouse being renovated by Australian Liam Mugavin. Current estimates vary between 8 and 11 million. ![]() Japan has millions of empty homes, known as akiya, and the numbers are growing due to the country’s ageing population. We were barely scraping by,” Mugavin says as he shows AFR Weekend through the two-storey house. In Sydney, there is no way I could do anything like this. Moreover, the house was free and the local authorities are paying him to tear it down and move it to the ski village where he already operates a hotel. While it took him years to make the connections which helped him find the property, Mugavin looked at only six houses before he landed on the 300-year-old structure that ticked all his boxes. Many are boarded up and sinking into decay as roofs collapse and shoulder-high weeds take over. Unwanted by the children of their elderly occupants once they die, hundreds of empty homes line the winding roads and abandoned rice paddies in Niigata prefecture. The 36-year-old furniture designer from Sydney found fertile hunting grounds in the abandoned villages just an hour’s drive from his home near the ski fields in the Japanese Alps.Īustralian Liam Mugavin in his 300-year-old farmhouse which will be dismantled in July and moved to the Japanese ski fields to be transformed into a woodworking studio. Liam Mugavin could not believe his luck when he started searching for a historic Japanese farmhouse to convert into a design studio. ![]()
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