The family home in Toyama: how to choose.

Seven ways to use a family home in Toyama. Arranged by whether you pay upfront and whether there is income, the fit becomes clear.

• Restore it and rent it as a home. Renovation costs borne by the owner, all rent to the owner. Business plan to design, construction and operation, handled by us end to end → put a vacant house to use without selling
• A DIY lease. Rent it as it is to a tenant who wants to fix it themselves → Register as a rent-and-fix tenant
• Rent it to a company as staff housing. Companies in Toyama look for big detached houses to use as staff dormitories or housing for technical intern trainees. The requirements and the steps on the company's side → Company housing and staff dormitories in Toyama. The rules for letting it as trainee housing → Housing for technical intern trainees and Specified Skilled Workers in Toyama
• A guesthouse. A whole-house rental or minpaku, with survey, construction, filing and management through one contact → Turn a kominka into a guesthouse. Already a guesthouse? Management only → Minpaku management and operation
• A shop or café. Change of use, fire and health requirements cleared before design → Turning a kominka into a café or shop
• Repair it and live in it, or make it a second home. Start with insulation and seismic work; fixing only the part you live in is an option → Kominka renovation
• Sell as it is. We buy it directly, contents included, no clearing out — and we restore what we buy → Selling a vacant house or kominka in Toyama

You don't need to pick one before you ask. We hold both a real estate licence and a construction permit and handle renting, repairing and selling through the same person. After seeing the house and its location, we lay out in numbers which routes work and which don't.

The 2023 Housing and Land Survey put Toyama Prefecture's vacant houses at a record 69,700, a vacancy rate of 14.7% — higher than the national 13.8%. Yet Toyama's home ownership rate is 74.9%, third in Japan, and the average floor area per dwelling is 138.77 ㎡, the largest in Japan. In Toyama, most large houses are lived in by their owners. As a result, the prefecture has comparatively few detached houses available to rent for a family.

That structure decides who the family home is for. There is no need to compete with studio flats. The winning move in Toyama is to rent to people looking for a big detached house: families with children, companies housing transferees and foreign workers, newcomers who want to fix a house themselves. As a guesthouse too, people come not for a city hotel but for "a house you can only stay in here" — Yatsuo, Gokayama, the scattered villages of Tonami.

Snow, on the other hand, changes the premises. Roof snow and frozen pipes wreck an empty house over winter. Looking at insulation and the roof first, and arranging pipe draining and snow clearing until the house is in use, are conditions particular to Toyama.

There are five steps. Business plan consultation, drawings and change of use, design and construction, handover, and then advice on tenants, management and repairs after handover. Renovation costs are borne by the owner, and all of the rent comes to the owner. Because we handle it end to end, there is one window even after handover (put a vacant house to use without selling).

A DIY lease rents the house as it is to someone who wants to fix it with their own hands. The tenant pays for the work; the owner pays nothing upfront. We take free registrations from people who want to rent and fix and match them with houses.

Company housing is also a realistic exit in Toyama. In a prefecture of homeowners, family rentals are scarce, so companies look for large detached houses as staff dormitories or accommodation for technical intern trainees. From the owner's side, only the occupant changes, from a family to company staff; restoring and renting works the same way. What the company checks (bedroom size, rent ceiling, winter preparation) is in company housing and staff dormitories in Toyama. How it proceeds when the company hires an agent is in choosing a company-housing agent in Toyama.

Whichever route you choose, we look at the same things first.

• The frame. Hokuriku farmhouses are framed with thick posts and beams and the structure is usually sound. Damaged members can be replaced. If the bones are alive, the house can be rented, a guesthouse or a home
• Roof and snow. Tiles on earth weigh tonnes, and snow adds to the load. Re-roofing serves both snow and seismic safety
• Road access. Even a non-rebuildable lot can be repaired and used. Because it cannot be rebuilt, using it or selling as-is is the realistic choice
• Farmland or forest attached? Farmland needs the agricultural committee's permission and follows different procedures from a house lot. We treat the house, farmland and forest as separate exits
• Tilting. Sloping floors, doors that won't close. Whether the cause is the ground, the footing stones or the frame changes the fix and the cost

The site survey takes one to two hours and is free. Posts and beams, foundation, underfloor, roof, plumbing — and we tell you on the spot whether it can be repaired and roughly what it costs. No charge if you decline. No drawings needed; with old houses, none is the norm.

Just owning it costs ¥150,000–400,000 a year in property tax, fire insurance, standing charges for water and electricity, mowing and snow clearing — ¥1.5–4 million over ten years. The breakdown is in What to do with the family home; what happens each month and who to ask is in the year-round calendar.

If you sell, we buy it directly as it is: contents included, no clearing out, no brokerage fee, handover in as little as two weeks from the survey. We restore the houses we buy rather than demolishing them, so the family home survives. The ¥30 million special deduction for inherited vacant houses (conditions apply, until the end of December 2027) can apply to a sale to us too. See We buy kominka and vacant houses and the ¥30 million deduction.