> One of the things that really surprised me recently is how low the cost of real estate is for an older, normal middle class home in some sparsely populated ar

> One of the things that really surprised me recently is how low the cost of real estate is for an older, normal middle class home in some sparsely populated areas of Japan. If you're willing to move to depopulating areas houses cost a little kinda everywhere. In Puglia, Italy, in my in laws village (8'000 people), you can buy a freshly renovated, rather huge house for 50k, and you can likely find livable ones, not renovated at the 10-15k. In US, in many rural areas you can buy a whole home in good conditions at the 50k mark. Japan follows the same trend, and yes, I've traveled Japan some, there's plenty of almost-ghost towns nowadays where you can buy real estate for pennies as well.