Japan firms turn to satellites, AI to find abandoned houses for sale
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The number of abandoned houses in Japan has been on an uptrend, with government data showing that there were around nine million in 2023.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
Dozens of Japanese companies are capitalising on a combination of satellite imagery and artificial intelligence (AI) to help them find abandoned houses that could be put up for sale, as the greying country copes with a rise in deserted housing.
A service provided by start-up Where Inc uses AI trained on tens of thousands of photos to identify ageing roofs, based on characteristics such as rustiness and colours. Houses that are likely left abandoned are marked on satellite imagery.
One of the users, Mr Kotaro Yasue, recently found a two-story wooden house and reached its owner through a real estate registry. It turned out that the house had been left unattended for more than 10 years, and the owner was at a loss at how to dispose of it.
Mr Yasue, who heads a house rental service company in the central Japanese prefecture of Gifu, agreed to buy the house for just 1 yen (less than one Singapore cent) from the owner.
“Before I started using the service, I had to visit local real estate agents or check each site by myself,” Mr Yasue said.
The number of abandoned houses in Japan has been on an uptrend, with government data showing that there were around nine million in 2023.
According to Where, the AI service became available with the help of technology being developed by an entity affiliated to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to analyse craters on the moon. It can also assist finding land that can be used as carparks or installation sites for solar panels.
The Tokyo-based company has already secured around 50 client companies since the full-scale launch of the service in 2024. KYODO NEWS
