Buy a foreclosed Japanese house. Without walking into a legal trap.

An ordinary listing risk score is not enough for keibai. A court auction is all-cash with no loan contingency, sold as-is with no agent and no warranty, and four conditions in the court files can stop a foreign buyer before they ever bid. Yudane reads each lot against all four, then returns a single call — Proceed, Caution, Avoid, or Cannot bid — with the reasons, the scenario costs, and the bid math.

The four-level verdict, defined

Proceed

No call-changing legal blocker. A foreign buyer can bid; the only requirement is the standard all-cash non-resident handoff.

Caution

Workable, but with real cost or risk to verify first — budget the certain base and read the drivers before you offer.

Avoid

A serious problem the price rarely compensates for — structural, occupancy, or cost risk that usually outweighs the discount.

Cannot bid

A hard legal wall stops a foreign buyer outright — most often the farmland blocker (農地法) or a genuine fractional share (持分).

The verdict, the reasons, and the bid math are always free. The paid layer is the document deep-read — the scanned 三点セット, OCR-read, translated, and risk-flagged — and the vetted bilingual handoff. Browse the scored board →

What is a Japanese court auction (競売 / keibai)?

A keibai (競売) is a compulsory court auction in which a Japanese district court sells foreclosed real estate, often well below market value. It is all-cash with no loan contingency, the property is sold as-is with no agent and no warranty, and the only documents are the court files. Yudane scores every open court-auction lot across Japan for the legal traps that can block a foreign buyer before they bid, and reads each lot’s three court documents (三点セット) on request.

Can a foreign buyer bid at a Japanese court auction?

Often yes, but several conditions can stop you outright. If the land category (地目) is farmland (田 / 畑), 農地法 第3条 requires a 買受適格証明書 that a non-farmer cannot obtain. Some lots sell only a co-ownership share (持分) you cannot use. An occupant with a senior lease (対抗力) cannot be removed. And payment is all-cash wired to the court, which a non-resident handles through a bilingual judicial scrivener (司法書士). Yudane flags each of these per lot before you bid.

What is the Yudane verdict, and what does it cost?

Every lot gets one of four verdicts — Proceed, Caution, Avoid, or Cannot bid — from the same methodology used across the site. The verdict, the structured reasons, the scenario costs, and the bid math are free; Yudane never paywalls the triage. The paid layer is the document deep-read (the scanned 三点セット, OCR-read, translated, and risk-flagged) and the vetted bilingual handoff.

Is Yudane’s risk methodology open and checkable?

Yes. The asbestos risk index (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19625688) covers 1,360 residential districts across 51 municipalities. The termite damage model (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19626972) is calibrated against the MLIT 2013 national survey of roughly 5,300 wooden detached houses. Both are open preprints, not yet peer-reviewed, published on Zenodo under CC BY 4.0 together with the source code and the derived datasets, so anyone can re-run the method and check any verdict against it.

What is the difference between a court auction (keibai) and an akiya bank?

They are different channels. An akiya bank (空き家バンク) is a municipal listing of vacant houses sold on the private market with an agent, a normal contract, and sometimes financing. A court auction (競売 / keibai) is a compulsory sale run by a district court to repay a creditor: all-cash, sold as-is, no agent, no warranty, and with legal blockers (farmland, fractional shares, sitting tenants) that never appear in an akiya listing. Keibai is usually cheaper and riskier, which is exactly why Yudane scores it.

Do I need a visa or to live in Japan to bid at a court auction?

There is no nationality or residency requirement to own property in Japan, and a non-resident can bid. The practical hurdle is payment: the deposit and full price are wired to the court in cash with no financing, and a non-resident cannot open a standard Japanese bank account, so a bilingual judicial scrivener (司法書士) executes under a notarised, apostilled power of attorney. Yudane prices this handoff into every verdict.