Take Kurosawa & Joey Stockermans on Founding Akiyamart and the Journey Ahead

We had the pleasure of interviewing Take Kurosawa and Joey Stockermans about Akiyamart, their search and discovery platform for akiya in Japan. They discussed the challenges of purchasing real estate in Japan for foreigners and the need for A to Z guidance on helping foreigners find their dream akiya, and more! This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

MailMate: Tell us about who you are and the service you founded.

Take Kurosawa: My name is Take. We both studied at ICU in Tokyo back in 2010. I was only there for a year. Joey was there for a couple of years. That's where we started our friendship. Since then, Joey and I have had a lot of adventures together and stayed in touch. Joey went to New York and worked in tech. I went to California and worked in tech. Sometime during the past year, we went to Montenegro, setting up an Airbnb for my fiance who is from there. I had previously set up a couple of Airbnbs in Hawaii, and I saw a lot of benefits of short-term rentals. That’s when we started talking about Japan again. 

We had seen Cheap Houses Japan on Instagram. We were like, why don't we buy one of those? We committed at that moment. We decided, life's short, let's try to buy a property in Japan—we couldn't afford anything here in California and Joey's in Canada, so we ended up buying a property in Beppu. During that period, we navigated a lot of bad UI Japanese websites. I'm a real estate agent here in California, so I use a lot of Zillow or Redfin. So we're like, let's make a Zillow or search and discovery tool [for akiya]. Joey's trade is software engineering. So he coded up the beta version, and the rest is history.

Joey Stockermans: Until that trip to Montenegro, I hadn’t considered any of this. I had lived in Japan for six years when I was in school, but it had been 12 years since I had been back to Japan at that point. And so I wasn't even considering Japan that strongly. But deep down, I feel there was a part of me that I had left behind in Japan, and I did miss Japan, but I hadn't formalized that in my head yet. 

Around that time, both Take and I had read a book by Rick Rubin. In it, he talks about going with your gut more in life and that it is probably going to be the right choice. He's not saying it's always going to be the right choice, but it's going to be a more interesting choice to go with your gut more in life and just follow what your gut is saying. 

Around the same time as I had read that book, we started looking at Cheap Houses Japan and seeing these cheaper properties. We were like, “All right, why not try this? Don't think about this too hard. It feels right. Worst case scenario, we're gonna spend a bunch more time in Japan and go on this adventure. That sounds like a lot of fun. Let's just do it.”

Take: I’m going to echo Joey's train of thought. I think in our day and age, there's a lot of decision paralysis. There are so many options, so many cheap houses in Japan, so many places you can go—that we were kind of just like, “F* it—let's do it. We both are interested in this. Let's do this together.” 

It's a lot less scary doing it with someone else, splitting the financial costs and risks. Ultimately, we made Akiyamart. We found that we aren't the only ones in this space who can't afford housing in North America or our respective home countries. We saw there's a big appetite for people wanting foreign, friendly, Japanese real estate search and discovery sites. 

Since we started our service, we've talked to around 150 folks. We've done a lot of consultations. We've engaged with many people in this space, specifically in the bilingual space, which is how we met MailMate. As a foreigner, it's just so hard to figure out how to buy a house, set up utilities, and do all the paperwork. What the heck is a shiho shoshi [judicial scrivener]? There's so much stuff we learned about the process that we're now trying to educate and help other people, too. That’s the short version.

MailMate: Tell us about the service you founded. 

Joey: Our mission is to help anyone, regardless of their budget, purchase these houses in Japan. 

One of the things we realized starting this adventure was that while you can see these $3,000 to $5,000 homes [on Instagram or online], purchasing them is a hurdle. The issue comes down to the real estate commission. Real estate agencies make such thin margins on akiya properties that there's no incentive for someone to help you buy akiya. 

So, we're on a mission to find dedicated, trusted, bilingual real estate agents in Japan who are motivated to help move these houses and connect them with buyers. We're trying to be that service that will allow people to buy the properties they see on Instagram and other places. 

We're not just listing the properties; we’re working on that pipeline afterward to help you buy it. And it's not just passing you off to any real estate agent. Because, as we've discovered, that can be problematic. A lot of agents won't want to help you buy these homes. So we're navigating that situation. We've got about two or three trusted agents right now who are working on these cheaper houses, so we're hoping to grow that in the future.

MailMate: We're interested to hear more about the customer profile of the people who contact you through Akiyamart. You mentioned that there may be people who can't afford a house because of the high housing prices in North America. Tell us more about who you meet through your service. 

Take: So we launched our site in January, and we were featured by Business Insider pretty prematurely. We had just put the ship up in the air, and we were building it. But we made the mistake of doing free consultations. As a result, we talked to 80 people back to back that month and learned a lot about our customers. 

Joey: We were on the phone six hours a day talking to people interested in Japanese real estate. It was really valuable customer research and we did see the customer segment. Many people are interested in cheaper properties because they’ve been priced out of Western markets. It's not that these people don't have enough money to rent an apartment. It's more that there's no way they'll be able to break in to buy real estate in the Western market. So they're looking at Japan, and most of them already have some connection to the country. They travel there every year. They’re big snowboarders, or, you know, for some reason or another, they love Japan, so it’s a double whammy for these folks. 

Take: Coupled with high interest rates, it makes it so unaffordable [to purchase in the US]. I'm living in a mobile home. Joey's living in his parents' house. We're perfect examples. We've worked tech jobs for the past 10 years, and we still can't afford it. I think many people in our generation feel the same way—they look at a very good house in Japan for 50k, and it’s a no-brainer. 

As Joey mentioned, many people have a connection to Japan. They've either visited and loved it, grew up there, or have a partner who is from there. 

We've talked to everyone across the spectrum, from college students to millionaires, mostly North Americans, some Australians, and some Singaporeans. It’s really all over the place. 

MailMate: Are they thinking of moving to Japan full-time? I know visas can be an issue. Were you able to touch on visas with them during these consults?

Joey: You're probably aware that property ownership in Japan does not affect immigration status. So a lot of people ask about visas, and we have to give them a straight-up answer that “No, you can't use your property to get any sort of immigration status. You're going to be a tourist. You can own it as a tourist. You can register a car as a tourist, but you will be limited to 90 days twice a year.” Ninety days twice a year seems to be the status quo if you want to do long-term tourism in Japan.

That being said, we point people toward Nick at Japan Remotely. He does an excellent job of guiding foreigners toward getting different visas in Japan and runs a consultation service there. So there are options and ways to indirectly leverage your property to help you get an immigration visa. 

For example, the business manager visa requires a physical office. You can do things, such as wall off a room and have an external door on your property and call that an office. Again, every case is going to vary, but there are certain things you can do with your property to help get certain visas, but not directly, no. 

To answer your question, most people that we speak to are interested in using these properties for three to four months a year. And yeah, they're happy with the 90-day tourist visa.

MailMate: What challenges might an individual face purchasing Japanese property while based in the US? Do you have any advice for overseas purchasers? Do you have any dos or don’ts?

Take: First, use Akiyamart to understand what's out there. Second, contact us. As Joey mentioned in our mission statement, we're trying to be an A-Z service. If you're in the US and want to buy a property, we want to help you. 

The challenge is this is a pretty new-ish space. Akiya have been trending over the past couple of years, but no one's built a full process of A to Z—this is how you do it. I think that's where the challenge is. There are a lot of people now who are doing it, like ourselves. However, there’s still a lack of clear documentation of the whole process and an explanation of the differences and nuances between California real estate and Japan real estate. Things go at a different pace, there’s different paperwork, there’s hanko [a personal seal], there’s shiho shoshi—there are all these new terms to learn. 

Also, people expect Japan to be much more digital than it is. The biggest surprise to us was the lack of digital. Japan's getting there, but ultimately, don't expect Japanese real estate transactions to be similar to your native country because it's a different ball game. 

Joey: Take nailed the larger picture. I thought of a bunch of small, random things like having to FedEx a lot of documents. FedEx fees rack up. 

You might also want to adjust your budget a little bit higher. You might be very excited by a $5,000 home, but for it to be truly livable, you'll have to put about $20,000 into renovation. 

You’ll also need to think about how you're going to get a car if you're buying one of these remote properties; or how you're going to get your mail and utilities turned on—use MailMate; or how do you get a bicycle—because you’ll need to register it. 

There are a lot of other things that people don't realize aren't going to be so easy. For example, the difficulty in opening a Japanese bank account. You're not going to be able to open a Japanese bank account, so you’ll need to rely on other services. There are a lot of hurdles that people don't think about. 

MailMate: So your service will provide A to Z guidance for someone who is interested in purchasing from abroad.

Take: That's the mission statement. We're not quite there yet. We've got the search and discovery down, so now people can easily find properties. We are now tackling the transaction piece of how to not only incentivize agents to work with us on these cheap $5,000, $10,000 properties but also streamline a lot of these frustration and friction points that we felt. I’d say we’re 50% of the way there.

Joey: We're not trying to bring these services in-house. Instead, we're trying to be the connecting glue to all these other bilingual services, such as MailMate or Nick at Japan Remotely or a car-buying service. We're trying to be the hub where we can direct people to all these English-speaking services so they get everything they're going to need handled in addition to buying the home. We want to pass people off to the right services.

MailMate: You mentioned common costs that people don't really think about, like buying a car if they’re going to be purchasing a remote property. Are there any other common costs associated with buying and renovating an akiya that people should be aware of? 

Take: We bought our house for $40,000. We thought we weren’t going to renovate too much. We lived there for a couple of weeks. And we're like, “Okay, we gotta change a couple of things here.” So we went for a total reform so it was a bigger project than we thought. We just got off the phone right before this call, and it's probably going to be closer to 40k so about 100% of the property cost. But we are really customizing it. Our goal is to make the Beppu property a minpaku or Airbnb, and we're trying to give it a lot of character and soul—not just cookie-cutter prefab shower units and stuff like that. So we are going a little bit hardcore, but yeah, we budgeted 100% of our purchase price of the house. 

One thing I just want to call out is taishin, and earthquake proofing the walls. Specifically for these older houses, you’re probably going to need to go into the walls and increase their strength. That was a cost we did not think about beforehand. 

Joey: I do agree with what Take said. We did go very custom. And the initial quote was about $30,000. At the end of the day, it's coming in at about $40,000. But I think if you went with more of the cookie cutter unit, shower unit, kitchen—it might be less. 

MailMate: So there are lots of costs that aren't baked into the purchase of the property itself, which might be very cheap. You're also looking at renovation costs and legal fees.

Take: Yeah, a ballpark figure for closing costs on a property, and again, depends on how much the property is priced at, but expect around 10% to 15% in closing costs is what we tell folks, just to set their expectations. That includes the shiho shoshi fee, insurance, real estate commission, maybe a property inspection. The costs do add up. If you see the price tag, I would throw in 10 to 15% just to acquire the property. It's what we recommend people to think about.

MailMate: And if someone were interested in your services, how much would that cost? 

Take: We're piloting that, but for now, we have an Akiyamart Pro plan that allows you to access all the listings on our site. We're going to rethink the subscriber model pretty soon so that we provide more value to investors. 

The second part is now we're trying to figure out the real estate transaction side. Again, we're trying to incentivize real estate agents to work with us. We're thinking about charging a flat fee. Part of it will go back to the real estate agent to help them want to search for akiya. Part of it will go back to us. We have yet to work it out, but roughly, we’re thinking about $3,000 for a start-to-finish job, with us helping and consulting someone to get them across the finish line, keys in hand for an akiya. More to come there. 

MailMate: Any closing thoughts? 

Take: If anyone's listening to or reading this, buying a property in Japan is so doable. There are a lot of small steps that are intimidating, especially if you don't understand Japanese. And you don't need to go through us to buy a house, but we're trying to make it easier for those who don't have the time to charge through the dirt and learn like we have. But it is a very doable thing. 

We absolutely recommend buying in Japan. Interest is surging, specifically this year. We can tell just from our site traffic and the people we're talking to. There's a newfound urgency, where people feel that buying an akiya is becoming mainstream. We're seeing articles about it. We're seeing a lot more interest in some of these properties. So I would say, don’t wait too long. The interest is spiking very, very quickly.

Joey: The main takeaway I want to give people is—don't think about it too hard. If you have experienced Japan and loved it, you cannot go wrong embarking on this adventure of Japanese real estate. 

Looking at these old homes is fun. There are great deals to be made, and you'll spend more time in Japan! If you think that's exciting, I say just do it.

Learn more about Take Kurosawa and Joey Stockermans and their services at Akiyamart.