After two decades of thinking about it, we are finally making the transition from renting to owning a home. When we first attempted to buy a home in the early 1990s we knew very little about what it would entail and were discouraged from following through with the purchase after realizing we couldn't get what we wanted. Convinced we'd be renters for the rest of our lives, it wasn't until the 2008 recession that we were forced to reassess our precarious situation as freelance workers and started to think seriously about buying again.
Middle aged, we were marginally employable, but had saved money during the years when our income was more than enough for our immediate needs, having invested it with varying degrees of success. In the end, we decided there was enough to purchase a home that would guarantee us a roof over our heads regardless of our work prospects.
The government also carried out its survey of the nation's housing stock in 2008 — something it does every five years. Right now, there is a great deal of discussion about one statistic that emerged from that survey — the one that said 7.5 million houses and apartments in Japan were vacant. That number has likely increased since then, but at the time the media paid little attention, since the government didn't want people to think too carefully about what it meant.