About
Sumikoto (住処, “a place to live”) puts vacant and low-cost property from across Japan on one map, with the hazard and condition data that decides whether a cheap house is a bargain. That is the whole idea. Everything else is a tool built around it.
Why it exists
Japan has millions of empty homes and hundreds of places publishing them: municipal akiya banks, prefectural portals, private agents. Each has its own site, its own format, and its own idea of what a search box is. None of them show you the flood map. We wanted one place to look — a map you can pan, filters that mean the same thing everywhere, and the hazard rating beside the price. So we built it.
The listings are published by municipalities and owners; we index them and link back. Charging admission to someone else’s public notice would be wrong, and it would make a worse product. Paid plans buy tools, never data.
We send you to the original publisher and take nothing from the sale. We are not a licensed real estate agent and do not act as one, so we have no reason to steer you towards any particular house.
A cheap house in a flood plain or on a liquefaction zone is not cheap. Flood, tsunami, landslide, and seismic ratings sit on every listing, and you can filter by them.
A price-reduction badge appears for everyone because it is what brings people back. The series behind it — how much, how often, how long it has sat — is the product.
Partner
KickAssets has spent years helping people from overseas find, inspect, and buy homes in Japan, and documents the whole process on YouTube — the good houses, the bad surveys, and what a “free” akiya really costs. That experience shapes what Sumikoto shows and what it warns about. If you are thinking of buying here, start with the channel.
What we want to build
The map stays free, and the things we add to it are tools for people who have found a house and want to know more. This is the order we are working in. Founder subscribers get a say in it.
3 listings across Japan, clustered on a vector map, with every filter open to everyone.
Keep a search, and on Pro get an email when a new listing matches it.
The series behind a reduction badge, and a one-page hazard summary for a listing.
Save individual listings, not just searches, and see how the price has moved since you did.
Stations on the map for everyone. Hospitals, convenience stores, and well-liked places to eat for Pro.
A rough sense of what a house of this age and construction costs to bring back, and to keep.
The data is Japanese already. The interface should be too.
Contact
Questions, a listing source we are missing, a wrong hazard rating — write to support@sumikoto.com. A person reads it.