For some buyers the house is the smaller half of the deal. They want the setting: space, a field, a hillside of trees. Many akiya (empty homes in Japan) do come with more land than a garden. A listing gives you one number for it. This guide explains what that number covers, what it leaves out, and who holds the rest.
It is general information, not legal or tax advice.
What Engawa shows
On Engawa, a home's land appears as one row, "Land size", in square metres. We hold it for 7,080 of our 8,258 live homes. The middle one is 336 sqm. The figures below are as of October 2026.
| Land size | Homes | Median asking price |
|---|---|---|
| Under 200 sqm | 1,681 | 3,000,000 yen |
| 200 to under 300 sqm | 1,399 | 4,000,000 yen |
| 300 to under 500 sqm | 1,726 | 4,400,000 yen |
| 500 to under 1,000 sqm | 1,539 | 4,500,000 yen |
| 1,000 to under 3,000 sqm | 587 | 5,000,000 yen |
| 3,000 sqm and over | 140 | 4,500,000 yen |
About 700 of some 8,300 homes (727) come with 1,000 sqm or more. 47 come with 10,000 sqm or more, and the largest is about 95,000 sqm, in Okayama. 1,178 homes give no land figure. Medians are the middle asking price of homes that state a price. They show the market, not the worth of any one plot.
To see the big plots, open Explore with land of 1,000 sqm and over. The same listings are also easy to reach through the prefecture pages, for example Okayama, Kochi, Akita and Nagano.
What the number does not tell you
The listing gives the total. It does not give the parts. One figure can cover:
- the land under the house and the garden;
- a field or paddy;
- a hillside of forest;
- rough ground or a track;
- a few separate plots in different places.
We do not hold a breakdown of plots, or of forest and rough-land area, for most homes, and the listing page shows none of it. If a home's land is, say, 5,000 sqm, we cannot tell you how much of it is flat, usable or fenced. Ask the agent or the town office.
Farmland
This is where the rules change. Under Japan's Cropland Act, the sale of farmland normally needs the permission of the local agricultural committee. The official English text is on the Japanese Law Translation site. Whether a given buyer can get permission, and on what terms, is for the committee and the town office. We do not advise on it.
What we do is flag it where we can. Our farmland layer comes from the government's agricultural-area map. A home inside a strict farmland zone gets this warning on its page: "You will need the agricultural committee's permission to buy or convert, and foreign buyers are often refused." A home in the outer zone only gets: "The plot itself may or may not be classed as farmland; ask the town." That is a prompt to ask, not a ruling.
The layer is loaded for Kyoto and Kagoshima only. Of the 448 homes we could check there, 81 sit inside a strict farmland zone. Everywhere else we do not say either way, so a home with no farmland row is not a home with no farmland. Even where the map is loaded, it shows the zone around the point, not what each plot is.
A listing with farmland may tell you in other ways. Some town conditions mention it directly, for example that the committee's approval is needed to acquire farmland, or that a home that includes a field cannot be bought as residential land only. Read the "Municipal conditions and restrictions" section on a home's page.
An example: a home in Ayabe, Kyoto has land of 21,646.9 sqm and a building of 150.99 sqm. Its page carries a farmland warning for a strict farmland zone. That page's summary has not yet been reviewed by a founder, so read it as a pointer, not a promise.
Explore has a filter, hide strict farmland zones, but it only removes the 81 we know of. Homes we could not check stay in the list.
Forest and rough land
Forest has its own rules too, and so does rough land. The details differ by town and by type of land, and we do not hold them. The town office and the agent are the people to ask. Questions to put to them:
- What types of land are in the sale, and which plots are they?
- Is each plot in the house's name, and does the seller own all of it?
- Are there boundaries marked, and who agrees them?
- Is the forest in any protective or special category?
- Can the land be sold with the house, or only the residential part?
Questions to ask before you buy land
- Is any of the land farmland, and do you need the agricultural committee's permission? Ask the town office.
- Can the plot be reached by a road you can use all year? For snow country, winter access to a snow-country akiya has the questions.
- Who maintains the land? A large plot is hard to keep tidy from another country, and neighbours sometimes expect it. Questions to ask about a holiday home covers running a house from abroad.
- Does the property tax change with the land? Our guide to the 6x property tax trap covers one thing to check, and the town office holds the rest.
- What does the land do to the price? A bigger plot does not always cost more. In our figures, homes with 3,000 sqm and over have a lower median asking price than those with 1,000 to under 3,000.
A big plot can also be a bargain or a burden. For prices by region, see what a small budget buys in Japan, and for where the quiet rural homes are, mountain and river country akiya. The building side of the listing is in what 3LDK means.
Where to ask what
- Town office and agricultural committee: farmland permission, land types, local rules, tax.
- The akiya bank, through the "Original listing" link: what is included in the sale.
- A licensed agent: the plots, the boundaries and the paperwork. Land registry, survey and legal points belong with them or a qualified professional.
Frequently asked questions
Can I buy an akiya that comes with a field?
It depends on the land and on the committee's permission. Ask the town office.
Does a bigger plot cost more?
Not in a straight line. In our figures the median asking price rises with plot size up to 3,000 sqm and then falls back.
Does Engawa show forest or farmland areas?
Not as areas. The listing page shows one land size. A farmland warning appears only where we have loaded the government map, which is Kyoto and Kagoshima for now.
Can I buy just the house and leave the land?
Ask the agent. Some town conditions say a home with farmland cannot be bought as residential land only.
Ready to ask?
If a home with land is on your shortlist, open it and use "Enquire about this house", and ask what each plot is. A founder replies by email, and it is free to ask. If an estate agent handles the sale, you can also ask Koryoya, our listed agent, to help in English: your enquiry reaches us first, and reaches Koryoya only after you confirm your email and we forward it.