Comment by bamboozled

I live in Japan by the way. It’s no where as dire as you make it sound. The houses are mostly knocked down because of the cultural attitude towards them and people’s lack of DIY knowledge when it comes to renovations. Many young people in the country side a slowly changing attitudes but the bones of many of their houses are no less garbage than anywhere else in the world. If your house costs $6k USD, then it leaves you a lot of left over money for renovations.

I’ll agree it sucks you can’t have a really cheap house an 15% return on your money (which seems like an exaggeration). But with some ingenuity I think people could make the lower property and house prices work for them a lot more than they do.