Not YouTube or On-Site Visits... "Found Prime Land!" Even Real Estate Agents Quietly Use This Service [What’s Up Japan]

A Real Estate Startup Harnessing Space Technology

Lunar Surface Analysis Applied to Earth

Building Age Assessed by Examining Roofs

Aiming to Solve the Problem of Opaque Property Listings

Editor's NoteThis is a collection of stories and observations from Japan, reported by an international affairs journalist based in Tokyo. Updated every Saturday.

People often say, "When it comes to real estate, nothing beats an on-site visit, not YouTube." In other words, if you want to find good land or a good house, you have no other choice but to put in the effort yourself. The terminology is difficult and the procedures complicated, so many people rely on real estate agents or industry experts with whom they've done business for a long time. Perhaps that's why, every time you deal in real estate, you can't help but wonder, "Are they hiding the really good places from me?"

A new service has emerged that could resolve these concerns. This week, Nikkei (Nihon Keizai Shimbun) introduced a Japanese startup called 'Wear (WHERE),' which offers a service that finds prime land using satellite and space technology. The idea is that you don't have to physically travel to distant locations—everything can be seen from space.

Wear analyzes land information across Japan using lunar surface analysis technology developed by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. This technology was originally developed to analyze the craters on the moon, allowing researchers to study their size and condition in detail without traveling there directly. When this technology, which enables detailed observations of the moon, was applied to the Earth, it automatically distinguished between land and buildings and identified real estate with a high probability of being available for transactions.

Example of the user interface of the Japanese startup 'Wear'. By entering the desired conditions on a smartphone, it shows land or housing that meets the conditions through satellite technology. Wear.

According to Nikkei, Wear's database now contains around 73 million land records. The company automatically filters land with high transaction potential—including parking lots, vacant lots, and empty houses—based on customer requirements. Moreover, by using the same crater analysis technology, Wear can analyze the building's condition simply by looking at the roof. This allows the service to estimate what condition the building on a given plot of land is in, as well as its completion year. Incredibly, it can even determine whether a house currently has its lights on or not.

The usage is simple. If you enter conditions—such as location—on the service screen, you can view suitable land all over Japan. If you find a plot you're interested in, you can also check owner information, whether it's in a flood or disaster-risk area, and whether it's in a development area, among other details.

Takeo Akutsu, CEO of Wear, relayed to Nikkei that he developed this service to enhance transparency in real estate information. Akutsu explained, "In the industry, the key is how quickly you can obtain land purchase information. Usually, information gets passed from small local real estate agents, who've operated in the area for a long time, up to large corporations." He pointed out that, as a result, valuable information is rarely released to the public. Even Japanese companies often have to send personnel on business trips to various regions, searching maps to find factory sites and the like. In the past, it took an average of 30 hours to narrow down 100 candidate sites. Now, it can be done with just a few clicks.

Promotional screen of the Japanese startup 'Wear'. It advertises that "99% of real estate is invisible" and claims to reveal 99% of it using satellite technology. Wear.

As a result, many companies are adopting the service. It is already being used by more than 200 companies, including real estate developers and restaurant franchise operators. Interestingly, even real estate agencies are using it. For example, Hankyu Hanshin Real Estate highlights the ease of securing properties to broker and the convenience of having advance information on listings, allowing smoother negotiations with property owners. Japan's supermarket franchise Life is also actively using the service to find new store locations. In addition, it is proving useful for selecting land for solar power plants as well.

Originally, CEO Akutsu had envisioned a real estate business building houses on the surface of the moon, and even proposed this idea to JAXA before founding Wear. Although he was rejected—apparently because the proposal sounded eccentric—he did not give up. He decided, "If I want to do business in the space sector, I have to become a stakeholder first," and enrolled at a Japanese university with JAXA research facilities. While working on small probe research, he continued searching for business ideas. It was then that he took note of a colleague's research into lunar surface analysis, and when he tried applying it to Earth, he had a eureka moment and found his direction.

The real estate industry is one where trends shift rapidly based on policy or development plans—a complete contrast to the space industry, which is built on years of research and development. And while space technologies are most often used in rockets, satellites, or defense, it is fascinating to see them applied to real estate. Perhaps soon we'll be saying that the best land for humans is found from space.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.