Realtor Yuken Kon specializes in properties most of his peers steer clear of.

Take a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of an aging, five-story Soviet-style danchi complex in the quiet outskirts of Yokohama.

It belonged to a divorcee in her 60s who jumped to her death from the roof of the building amid a bout of depression. The condo was inherited by one of her daughters, but she had no use for the property — it was nearly five decades old and tied to painful memories of her late mother.