From Tara’s Desk

Spring market is fully underway, and this week’s issue is the kind of mix I love — something completely bizarre happening on the other side of the world, and something worth driving to this weekend right in our own backyard. Plus a market check-in because prices are doing interesting things depending on where you’re looking. Grab your coffee. Let’s go.

Quirky Facts You Want to Know {#quirky-facts}

Japan Has 9 Million Empty Houses — And They’re Basically Giving Them Away

Japan has a housing crisis, but not the kind we’re used to talking about. There are roughly 9 million abandoned homes sitting empty across the country — called akiya, which translates loosely to “empty house” — representing about 14 percent of Japan’s entire housing stock, according to the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. In some rural areas, you can buy one for less than the cost of a used car. Some towns are listing them for free, with the only condition being that you move in and fix the place up.

Let that sit for a second.

How does a country end up with millions of houses nobody wants? A few things colliding at once. Japan’s population is shrinking and aging faster than almost anywhere else on earth. Younger generations are moving to cities, leaving behind towns built for a population that is no longer there. And here is the part that would genuinely shock most American homeowners: in Japan, houses depreciate like cars.

After 30 years, the structure of a home is often valued at close to zero. Only the land underneath matters. The cultural baseline is that a house is not an investment — it is a building that gets old. When the original owner dies, heirs frequently don’t want to deal with a crumbling structure in a town they left behind decades ago. Japan’s inheritance laws made it easy to simply delay. Properties would sit in legal limbo, quietly deteriorating, because nobody was required to act.

Layer in a cultural preference for new construction — Japanese buyers have historically avoided second-hand homes the way Americans avoid buying a used mattress — and you have a market where supply accumulates while demand evaporates. The government has created “akiya banks,” publicly searchable registries of empty homes at steep discounts. Renovation subsidies, relocation incentives, and in extreme cases, free transfers in exchange for a commitment to live there. Despite all of it, the number is expected to roughly double over the next decade.

What this illustrates, more than anything, is that real estate value is not a law of nature. It is a product of demographics, culture, and economics — and when those things shift, values follow. The story that a home is your best investment is deeply American. It is built on population growth, migration patterns, and a cultural attachment to homeownership that does not exist everywhere. Japan is the long-run version of what happens when the demand curve bends in the wrong direction and nobody gets ahead of it in time.

Read the full deep dive on Japan’s akiya crisis here.

Town of the Week: Ipswich, MA {#town-of-the-week}

Ipswich sits just north of Gloucester on the Essex County coast, and it moves at its own pace. It is not trying to be Newburyport. It is not a destination for day-trippers in the same way Rockport is. What it has is substance.

Start your morning at Little Wolf Coffee on Central Street — small-batch roasted in-house, strong, exactly what you want before a long walk. For lunch or dinner, the Clam Box on High Street is not optional. It has been open since 1935. The fried clams are the reason people have been driving to Ipswich for generations, and they are still worth it. If you want something low-key in the evening, Brown Dog Food and Spirits in the downtown has good burgers, local beer, and comfortable neighborhood energy.

Weekends here tend to happen outside. The Trustees of Reservations manage the Crane Estate — over 2,100 acres that include Crane Beach, Castle Hill, and miles of trail. Appleton Farms, also managed by the Trustees and established around 1638, is one of the oldest continuously operating farms in the United States. You can walk open field trails that have been in use for nearly 400 years and watch working cattle while you go. It is an unusually grounded way to spend a Saturday morning.

Housing is on the higher end even by North Shore standards. The median sale price in March 2026 was $1,187,500, with a median price per square foot of $405, up about 13 percent year over year. Homes are taking around 26 days to sell on average — a bit longer than the 18-day pace of a year ago — which means buyers have slightly more room to breathe than they did in 2025. Competition for well-located, move-in-ready homes is still real.

Get the full Ipswich breakdown here.

New England Market Pulse {#market-pulse}

North Shore MA: The spring market is running warm. Single-family sold prices rose 7.4 percent month over month from February to March 2026. Inventory remains historically tight, though there is more available now than at this point last year. Properties that are move-in ready and near the coast or transit are not sitting. If you are a seller, the window is open. (Source: northofbostonlifestyle.com)

Southern NH: The Seacoast and southern corridor are seeing their most active spring in a few years. Pending home sales statewide were up 24 percent year over year in April — the largest single-month gain since 2020. Rockingham County’s Q1 2026 median hit $660,000. Buyers who were waiting are moving. (Source: NHPR, April 2026)

Middlesex County MA: The number worth watching is the year-over-year median — down 4.4 percent to $737,000 as of February 2026. It is the first notable softening in this region in some time. It may reflect mix rather than broad declines, but if you are pricing in this market right now, this is not the number to ignore. (Source: Redfin)

See the full market snapshot here.

Someone in your circle is thinking about buying or selling right now. They just haven’t said it out loud yet. If that person comes to mind, send them my way.

Tara Donahue-Scott | TDS Real Estate tarad@kw.com