The ACTUAL challenges of renovating akiya in Japan
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What inspired Anton Wormann to start renovating akiya properties in Japan?
If the real estate market in your country has gone bananas, there's something very intriguing about a very beautiful country like Japan. Buying is very, very easy in Japan, but renovating one up to standards. Japan population is declining with almost a million people a year, and with that comes a lot of weird consequences. I think it's more about the exchange of energy. Needs to be kids around playing and you need to create that kind of community and those we're human beings, you know.
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Welcome to Unpacking Japan. I'm Toby and today I have the pleasure to sit here for the second time with Anton. Thank you very much for coming again.
How did Anton document his early renovation projects and build his audience?
Toby, and thank you for bringing me to Osaka. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a pleasure. We've uh spoken about a year and a half-ish two years ago. Um, at a time when you had finished uh renovating your first apartment. You had started and were doing the Japandi house uh in a in a little street in this Ikanya that turned out beautifully. I think you were still renovating that uh when we were talking, and it came out uh or it was open to the public uh shortly after. after. And we talked about quite a few other projects that were in the works, but now some of them are finished, some of them remain unfinished, and you've got a lot of new things going on. So we're gonna unpack a little bit all of that. And um Where to start? Shall we start with the house that you finished right after uh we uh we spoke?
Um That was twenty twenty four.
I remember last time uh I was here I brought my mother to Osaka in Kyoto. Was here visiting Japan for the first time and at that time I was working on Nakano House, which was this uh This house close to Shin Nakano station. This was in spring, so I think we finished that house about two months later. My second freestanding house at the time and also my More less That house took about six months to finish, which is the fastest we've ever uh constructed a house.
Okay.
Right now, like I think the more houses that you make and the more The more you renovate, your taste gets kind of like more and more expensive.
Well I imagine you pick more complex houses and also from everything you learn you start to want to go more into the details of like oh this is also possible and you wanna do And you wanna learn and you wanna challenge yourself and we also do a lot more research on materials.
We went to Tajimi to see how they how they build and how they make Japanese traditional tiles and ceramics. And uh I'm a big nerd when it comes to materials. We always use uh natural materials, um natural hardwood tiles and as little uh plastic as possible. So everything around that in the the creative process is really interesting to me. I'm a Swede living here in Japan, so I think As a foreigner you appreciate a lot of things with the Japanese craftsmanship and the Japanese society that maybe Japanese people or if you're born and raised here, that's just in front of you and Atari Mai in a way. But as a foreigner you can kind of bring out those beauty spots and make it and bring it into the future in a way.
So that kind of created this Japani style a little bit with your cultural background, also your family background growing up uh with a lot of woodwork, I remember. Um, and now your interest in housing that on here in Japan, a combination of both that culminated at the time in the Nakano house. So you mentioned your second uh freestanding house at the time. I think it got a lot of media attention too. Uh people got interested in in your project and it seemed that it was your first larger scale public facing project that people realize, oh, there's this Swedish guy here, he's onto something. He's not just renovating his own IKEA for his own use, but he's got an idea and he's got a plan.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Anton Wormann to start renovating akiya properties in Japan?
0:00–0:58
2
How did Anton document his early renovation projects and build his audience?
0:58–8:11
3
What challenges did the Chiba farmhouse project present and why did it fail?
8:11–14:33
4
How was the dream waterfall house conceived and what made it different?
14:33–23:27
5
What key lessons did Anton learn from his renovation experiences?
23:27–32:53
6
What should prospective buyers know about purchasing akiya responsibly?
32:53–41:38
7
How do Japanese tax and anti‑renovation laws affect akiya projects?
41:38–1:02:01
8
What role does social media play in Anton’s renovation business and future plans?
1:02:01–1:19:10
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Unpacking Japan
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