Japan’s Glut of Empty Homes

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Robin Harding, Is this the Solution to Japan’s Glut of Empty Homes?  A culture of disposable housing has left the country with 8m ‘akiya’ — but one estate agency may have the answer. Financial Times, July 18, 2015.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/79297b ... 3-71cb60e8f08c.html

Quote:

“the country’s population falling by 271,058 last year

"Whereas countries such as the UK are suffering a terrible housing shortage, Japan’s government has just passed a new law to tackle the glut of abandoned, decaying houses.

“ ‘Personally, I think it’s not so bad,’ says Arai. ‘When I was growing up, what I always heard is that Japan has a huge population, the houses are small, and you won’t be able to buy one. Now you can buy a fairly big house for a low cost, refurbish it and live well.’

“the massive stimulus by the Bank of Japan has lowered mortgage rates and weakened the yen, attracting a wave of Chinese buyers

Note:
(a) Japanese English dictionary
* akiya 空き家(P); 空き屋; 空家; 空屋 【あきや】 (n): "vacant house; unoccupied house"
* chūko 中古 【ちゅうこ】 (n): "(1) used; second-hand; old; (2) Middle Ages"
* kachi 価値 【かち】 (n)
* tasu 足す 【たす】 (v): "to add"
* kiri 桐 【きり】 (n): ”aulownia tree; Paulownia tomentosa

(b) Katsutoshi “ARAI, president of the estate agency Katitas”
(i) 株式会社カチタス 代表取締役 新井 健資
(ii) In this report, the text uses “Katitas” whereas photo captions has “Kachitas.”  What is going on?
(A) In Japanese, 五十音 includes PRONUNCIATIONS ta-chi-tsu-te-to--and that is how many transliteration systems spell them, except one (which spells "ta-ti-tu-te-to" but naturally retains the Japanese, not English, pronunciations).
(B) Mr Arai’s company (name written in katakana: カチタス (pronounced ‘kachitas”), in English: Katitas; 事業内容: 中古住宅再生; based in Gunma Prefecture 群馬県 (landlocked, mostly mountainous; north of Tokyo))
https://katitas.jp/information/information.html
(C) There is another Japanese company (the same company name in katakana but spelled in English as “Kachitas;” in the business merger and acquisition; with a different management).  Both companies are civilian -- not government agencies, that is.
(D) Both the above companies has the Japanese name from the same origin: in Mr Arai’s case “家に価値タス” (translation: add values to houses, where に is a preposition for “to”)

On the other hand, Kachitas' website says its Japanese name stands for "お客様の価値（カチ）を足す（タス）"  (translation: add customers' values, or in commercial English maximize clients' values).

choi

(c) “ 'Most [real] estate agents are intermediaries — they connect a buyer with a seller and take a fee,' says Arai. 'We buy second-hand houses directly, refurbish them, and then sell them ourselves.' ”

A house in the second/last sentence is a fixer–upper.
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fixer-upper

(d) "A modest family home in the town of Kiryu, two hours north of Tokyo, is a sample of what Katitas has to offer."
(i) Kiryū, Gunma  群馬県 桐生市
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryū,_Gunma
(ii) Japanese Wikipedia says “地名の由来は、「桐が多く自生する土地」”

translation: place name was due to (the fact) the land had many indigenous Paulownia trees
(iii) Paulownia tomentosa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa
(native to central and western China; section 1 Nomenclature)

The huge leaves “are lightly hairy above and densely hairy beneath.”

(e) “it [rehabbed wooden house] is a pleasant and serviceable home”

serviceable
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/serviceable
(f) "Japan is a country shaped by nature, and in the real estate market nature has two forms: earthquakes and white-footed ants. One or the other destroys every wooden structure in the end"

The white-footed ants, Technomyrmex difficilis, have white feet (you can see it in images,.google.com), "does not bite or sting, nor has it been reported to cause any structural damage. Colony population estimates vary from 8,000 to 3 million individuals (Tsuji and Yamauchi 1994). WFAs are considered by homeowners to be a nuisance pest because they are frequently observed foraging in kitchens, bathrooms, and the exterior of buildings."  University of Florida (because the ants have infested lower Florida)
(g) "There is a further problem for cities because akiya do not occur in helpful clusters. Rather than an urban cancer, to be cut out by abandoning the declining neighbourhood, they are a kind of urban measles. Individual houses fall empty in every neighbourhood"

Just ask Detroit, which has the same problem, in a larger scale.

(h) "One such city is Toyama on Japan’s western coast. 'Put simply, we’re trying to change a city like [sprawling] Los Angeles into a city like San Francisco,' says Masashi MORI 森 雅志, the city’s charismatic mayor. (Among his innovations: free tram travel for anybody carrying a bouquet of flowers, to smarten things up.)")
(i) Toyama, Toyama 富山県 富山市
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyama,_Toyama
(capital city of Toyama Prefecture)
(ii)
(A) smarten (vt, vi): "to make smart or smarter; especially :  SPRUCE —usually used with up):
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smarten

* Besides describing a person, "smart" can be used for a thing, such as

smart (adj): "NEAT, TRIM <soldiers in smart uniforms>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smart
(B) That "smarten up" can describe both a person and a thing is made apparent in Oxford Dictionary.

smarten (vt, vi)
http://www.oxforddictionaries.co ... can_english/smarten