I went to Tokyo this year and was shocked at how cheap it was compared to major North American cities. Meals like ramen were $8.00 USD including tax and tip. Asked some young people how much rent was in Tokyo, "very expensive, young people need their parents help... $1,000 USD per month". Sums it up there, much cheaper than the US and Canada but salaries are so low it's expensive for them. My take away is that Japan has a rep for being super expensive when in fact it's now very cheap for North Americans.
It's only cheap if you come to Japan for holidays, or if you're an expat detached by your company to Japan.
If you're living in the country, receiving the same salary as any Japanese person, Tokyo is an expensive city. And I'm not even talking about language teachers, who cannot really live in Tokyo or all the Japanese people who are part-timers
Everywhere in the world salaries, rents and prices go hand in hand. Unless you're living on one side of a border and working on the other side (which is possible in EU) which allow you to game the system, rents and prices are based on supply and demand. Don't take it personally, but it does not make much sense to compare what you would get with a salary from one country while living in another country.
> Meals like ramen were $8.00 USD including tax and tip
There is no tip in Japan. And 8 USD for Ramen is super expensive, in Kansai you can get ramen for 5 USD or even less. Ramen should not cost that much anyway, it's super fast to make and ingredients are super cheap too.
On a recent trip to Tokyo I was under the same impression about the low rents until I noticed that many apartments are a single room roughly 200-300 square feet in size.
Yes, you can eat cheap ramen. But do you want to eat cheap ramen every day? Most supermarkets in Tokyo are expensive. Want some Zucchini? Pay 200 yen for a tiny one. Want an apple? Pay up to 350 yen for one. Want a beer? Pay 300 yen for 0.3l. Restaurants? Want pizza? Pay 20$. Maybe that's normal in the US, I don't know but in my experience, a pizza is 6$ tops.
Of course, there are things that are cheaper. If you live as Japanese as you can, you can save some money.
But rent prices are very high for a normal Japanese worker. As some people here already said salaries are very low.
Average income per age range[1]:
20s：348万円 (~34k)
30s：458万円 (~45k)
40s：586万円 (~58k)
50s：721万円 (~71k)
My ~55m2 room costs about ~1800$ without electricity etc. Since the owner recently changed for new people the price went up to ~2000$
Given it's a modern 'mansion' (apartment) with nice extras, in a very good location it's still cheap (wondering why every day.)
I heard SF is crazy expensive, but that's a different problem. Most people here, even in IT jobs get about 2000 dollar per month. So where can they live? They can live in some 30 years old very tiny apartment or live outside of Tokyo and drive in 1 hour or more every day.
Even if you live 30 minutes away by train, most trains coming from affordable areas are packed and you have to queue up to get into one, which can extend the commute time to an hour or more[2].
If you want to go to work by car be ready to pay around 300$ per month for a parking space.
Then, say you start a family. 55m2 won't cut it anymore. 80-100m2? Very few places. Very expensive. Most rooms here are between 20-35m2 made for singles.
Anyway, this maybe sounded negative but I love this city. All things considered, it's awesome and comfortable to live here.
So, this is a total anecdote, but I recently moved to Tokyo from SF, and while I don't think it's necessarily more expensive to live here, I wouldn't say it's a bargain by any measure.
My rent is comparable to what I paid in USD in various areas of the SF peninsula. However, move-in costs were outrageous. I have a pet, so that increases it some, but everything here for rent is a multiplier, ie.:
- I had to put 3x monthly rent down up front for security deposits (due to pet, average is 2 months)
- Pay the first two months rent up front
- Pay the real estate agency that helps you find an apartment (pretty much required) one month rent
- Pay a "guarantor" company half a month's rent for some kind of renter's insurance I guess
I'm lucky that I didn't have to pay "key money" for this apartment, which is effectively a bribe to the owner that you'll never see back. I also won't ever see my real estate fee or guarantor money again, and it's common to lose at least 1 month deposit due to "move out cleaning fees" (regardless if you keep the place spotless).
If you know prices in the bay area, paying 6.5X that rent up front is pretty painful, and not being able to recoup 2.5X your rent is also kind of rough.
I'm lucky that my salary didn't shift too much (aside from currency exchange) when I moved here, but generally salaries are much lower across the board in Japan, even Tokyo.
Food is similarly priced here as SF, depending on what you choose to eat. Some meals can be considered cheap (gyudon, ramen, etc) but you have to remember portion sizes tend to be different and meals don't typically include drinks here. It's also really nice that tipping is not part of Japanese culture, since I personally find it adds a lot to the total cost when you eat out a lot (like my fat ass).
Now, to add a huge caveat to all this, you can live cheaper in Tokyo if you choose to. When I moved here, I chose to keep my lifestyle roughly the same (though I didn't buy another car or motorcycle, so there's some savings). First, if you want to live more cheaply, don't bring a pet. You can also downgrade your lifestyle a fair bit which is an interesting difference from SF. In SF, even a small studio can go for a lot of $$$, but here, you can find small studios for $500-$1500USD relatively easily (whether they accept foreigners or not is a different issue).
TL;DR: Can definitely be cheaper depending on what sacrifices you're willing to make. With no sacrifices, about the same as SF, except up front costs.
But like your quote alludes to, the salient metric is internal purchasing power. If job salaries typically make $1000 a month out of reach, what does it matter to affordability unless you get something like remote work at the host country's pay rate?
Housing will always be nasty. Because everyone wants/needs it, and there is only so much land to build on (land that may or may not be needed for other things, like growing food).
Then you toss banks on top and things really spiral out of control.
Density. Most Americans and American cities refuse to increase density to the proper levels because there is a "suburbs" culture here. Everyone wants 2 car garage, large lawn etc. Living in an apartment for your entire life is looked down upon, especially if you have a family. We're still in the suburbs mindset as historically space has been extremely abundant.
I'm a young person, and to me it's more of an inequality problem than anything. Only poor people live in apartments, meaning apartment complexes are poverty- and crime-riddled. Either that, or they are so expensive, it would be cheaper to get a house. At least in the suburbs with a mortgage, I am able to build equity.
My experience is in a city that has not been positively affected by globalization. I know the housing market is quite different in the tech hubs of the country.
Living in an apartment for your entire life is looked down upon, especially if you have a family.
Not sure about others but personally the yard, larger home, parking etc are a huge quality of life boost. I can sacrifice for a while, but eventually need to enjoy life a bit.
Why is it as the US' population went up, the US' health and food services quality degraded? Observe that the US' own stand-in for government/communist style supplied food services through the fast-food chains of McDonalds, Burger King, etc... as well as the food stuffs supplied by their groceries, contributed immensely to the degradation of US health.
The US "beef industry" irresponsibly used antibiotics to artificially fatten their cattle, causing everyone who ate their products to also consume those antibiotics. Also, the US' own companies push sugar saturated products to their youth without any disposition to responsibility, where sugar is known and has been known to cause serious health deficits.
The US practices culling of their population to reduce density.
edit: People have trouble viewing it in this light. A simpler way is to view it through its parallel in warfare. European and "civilized" warfare is the sudden loss of large portions of the population and able bodied men through massive violence organized by their "ruling parties". "Jungle" warfare is one where the losses on the participants isn't high per encounter, but is very high over the duration of their "war".
Despite the West criticizing Mao and Stalin of killing off many of their citizens, the US can also be found to have killed off many of their own citizens through the use of subtler methods.
For example, as the US' population became aware of the detrimental effects of tobacco (whose mortal danger to health was known in the West's "ruling class and educated" for centuries), the population loss related to tobacco induced health deficits dropped, while other issues began to surface and increase. The observable culling of the population is far more active in the US than it is in Russia or China for example (once one becomes aware that it is more subtle, and more like 'jungle/islander warfare')
The effect is more like what we in the US see in Detroit. Depopulation or very slow growth can result in a cool housing market. There are many uninhabited houses in and around the greater Tokyo metro -that helps a lot.
"The median price for a home in Tokyo and its surrounding three prefectures is 28 million yen, or around $270,000."
Just fyi, if you only include Tokyo, price nearly doubles. It doesn't make the best comparison because Tokyo + 3 prefecture = 38 million people with over 5000 square miles.
However, that chart alone is very compelling because it shows something that you don't see anywhere else; declining housing price.
Is centralized and lax housing regulations the main reason for this? I don't think the author makes a strong argument, but it's certainly a contributing reason.
A huge part of lower home prices in Japan is that they treat housing as a depreciating asset in their economy. So it's more like buying a car than making an investment.
It also helps when houses are being depopulated because people are aging out of houses.
There used to be an Australian guy who went around buying and fixing undervalued houses in Japan. While out in his searches, he'd point out the many unoccupied houses.
As an aside, when is Japan going to reconsider how it calculates unemployment? As it is, their unemployment is like 3.7% yet many many younger people work for as temps, which is sort of counterintuitive for a very tight labor market.
That sounds bigger than it is. A circle with 40 mile radius ~= 5000miles. If you go a similar distance from NYC or DC etc the prices are still inflated because it's considered commuting distance, plus this is an average.
For comparison the US median home price is ~220k. But, the Median price in Fairfax VA which is 30 miles from DC is $510,000. Chantilly VA which is ~35 miles from DC is 400k.
> median price for a home in Tokyo and its surrounding three prefectures is 28 million yen
For this price you get a shack in the far suburbs of Tokyo. Anything remotely close to the center goes to 100 million yen. And prices are going up before of the Olympic Bubble, too. It's completely crazy.
When I was young I remember reading about "Tokyo, the city of $11 hot dogs"...this was when a normal hot dog in the states was a buck or two.
I never really stopped to figure that maybe it was just foreign stuff that was crazy expensive. One of the really eye opening things I've learned in the last few years is how relatively affordable housing can be...even within the Tokyo city limits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w -- older homes can be much much cheaper.
This needs to be considered against local incomes of course, so they're a bit less tempting to locals than to American foreigners from ultra expensive coastal cities.
Part of this seems to be the particular Japanese combination of the shrinking and aging population + continued attempts at maintaining GDP via construction works + cultural preference for new living arrangements instead of old construction. But like anyplace, you pay for where you live and there are certainly incredibly expensive places to live.
Outside of living arrangements, public transport, food, clothes, and so on...everything except for personal vehicles is relatively affordable on a foreigner's salary.
However, salaries in Japan are surprisingly (sometimes shockingly low). I think I've heard that a person working in a regular "salaryman" job can expect to earn around their age * 10,000 USD. So if you're 30, you'll make around $30k USD. This information is a bit old, so expect it to be a little higher, but this table [1] from 2014 suggests a 32.4 year old computer programmer makes an average of 4,256,000 yen per year..or about $38k. Some occupations can make significantly more...but it's interesting to find yourself on this table and consider it.
> This information is a bit old, so expect it to be a little higher
Remember Japan doesn't really have inflation, so... not really. When they raised the sales tax to 8% it was an unexpectedly large problem because so many vending machines suddenly couldn't just charge 100 yen as they had for a decade, and raising by 10 yen (the smallest coin accepted by vending machines) would be too big a raise
Sorry for being a bit OT but you may remember last year a boy was missing for several days in a remote forest region of Japan. I found that surprising, my prejudice of Japan had been that it was very heavily populated and urbanised but when I looked it up I discovered that it is an incredibly forested country with 70% of the country this way. Practically twice that of the USA.
What never fails to amaze is how Tokyo, for being the world's most populous and largest city according to a number of metrics, is so clean and orderly, not to mention safe.
Just watch any of the street tours and stroll-throughs on YouTube [0][1][2]. There is almost a serene quality despite the crowds, and so very far from the dystopian "cyberpunk" vision that we've been taught to expect from "megacities."
This article from 2014 has problems. In 2016 Tokyo:
"Existing condominium units’ average prices rose by 3.73%...
New condominium units’ average prices skyrocketed by 21.2%..."
"...last year was particularly bad for housing starts in Tokyo Metropolitan Area, with 9.9% less new condominiums (40,449 units) being put on the market – the lowest level since 2010..." [1]
Basically the article has a politicized tone, comes from an urbanism advocacy group, ignores the recession, ignores Abenomics, misrepresents the true fluctuation of the real estate market in urban centers, jumps straight to "regulation" as the culprit, and is strikingly dismissive of environmental concerns.
It seems like there should be an arbitrage opportunity here, doing some kind of development in Japan vs. the US. The problem is for hardware it seems to make more sense to go even farther to China (where all the manufacturing is, anyway).
It's a cultural thing. They do the same with cars. It is very common to find engines and transmissions with 60k km on them available for import into the US at bargain prices.
I don't know about Japanese house inspection culture, but their car inspection system is designed to keep only new cars on the road. Essentially a stealth tax to discourage driving. So if your car fails inspection, which costs about $1000 just to attempt, you may as well part it out to Americans and buy another car...
Its possible given that Japanese don't like used houses that something similar exists for purchase of a used house, perhaps an inspection that costs $25K would discourage used house purchases.
The article attempts to claim that Japanese policymaking is somehow responsible for low prices. Correlation is not causation. For example one could posit that Japan is affordable precisely because nobody has any money, because their economy has been stagnant for two decades and against an aging population and reduced investment in critical technology such as industrial robotics it shows every sign of remaining so. Perhaps for many hope has left the building and with the absence of meaning life has become a rinse-and-repeat ritual of careful commuting.
Maybe housing in Japan wouldn't be so expensive if they didn't keep knocking down perfectly good houses to build a new one. It seems like they throw away a lot of value.
They buried the lede (presumably since it was inconvenient to the thesis of the piece):
“Housing is seriously unaffordable in Tokyo-Yokohama, with a 4.4 Average Multiple (average house price divided by average household income). Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto has an Average Multiple of 3.5 and is thus rated as moderately unaffordable. Despite these ratings, Japan has the most affordable housing of any megacities (over 10,000,000 residents) in the Demographia Survey.”
If you think real estate in Japan is "affordable", you need only talk to Japanese people. Salaries here are low, and the economy has been stagnant for decades. Younger people tend to live with their parents until marriage, and if you ask them why, they'll tell you: they can't afford to live on their own.
Yes, Construction is rampant, but that's mostly because buildings here are ripped down every few decades, not because cities are necessarily building more or larger buildings. There's just tons of churn.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you want affordable cities, a big part of the "secret" is tanking your economy for a few decades.
And yet it is much more affordable than, say, San Francisco (9.2) or Vancouver (10.3) by that same metric, which was their point. By this metric at least, Tokyo fares far better than comparable cities - no lede buried.
If you think the situation is bad, you need some perspective. That is massively better than any major coastal city in the US, and better than any first world city that is growing.
And even if it were bad by global standards, I'm pretty sure stagnant wages and declining housing costs is a way better situation than ours with declining wages and rapidly increasing housing costs.
[+] [-] the_patrick|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgarrigue|8 years ago|reply
Everywhere in the world salaries, rents and prices go hand in hand. Unless you're living on one side of a border and working on the other side (which is possible in EU) which allow you to game the system, rents and prices are based on supply and demand. Don't take it personally, but it does not make much sense to compare what you would get with a salary from one country while living in another country.
[+] [-] ekianjo|8 years ago|reply
There is no tip in Japan. And 8 USD for Ramen is super expensive, in Kansai you can get ramen for 5 USD or even less. Ramen should not cost that much anyway, it's super fast to make and ingredients are super cheap too.
[+] [-] duality|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|8 years ago|reply
Peogrammers can work remotely and make western wages in Tokyo for western companies though, and some friends have very high leverage this way.
[+] [-] codesuki|8 years ago|reply
Of course, there are things that are cheaper. If you live as Japanese as you can, you can save some money. But rent prices are very high for a normal Japanese worker. As some people here already said salaries are very low.
Average income per age range[1]: 20s：348万円 (~34k) 30s：458万円 (~45k) 40s：586万円 (~58k) 50s：721万円 (~71k)
My ~55m2 room costs about ~1800$ without electricity etc. Since the owner recently changed for new people the price went up to ~2000$ Given it's a modern 'mansion' (apartment) with nice extras, in a very good location it's still cheap (wondering why every day.) I heard SF is crazy expensive, but that's a different problem. Most people here, even in IT jobs get about 2000 dollar per month. So where can they live? They can live in some 30 years old very tiny apartment or live outside of Tokyo and drive in 1 hour or more every day. Even if you live 30 minutes away by train, most trains coming from affordable areas are packed and you have to queue up to get into one, which can extend the commute time to an hour or more[2]. If you want to go to work by car be ready to pay around 300$ per month for a parking space.
Then, say you start a family. 55m2 won't cut it anymore. 80-100m2? Very few places. Very expensive. Most rooms here are between 20-35m2 made for singles.
Anyway, this maybe sounded negative but I love this city. All things considered, it's awesome and comfortable to live here.
[1] https://doda.jp/guide/heikin/2014/syokusyu/it/ [2] Source: co-worker
[+] [-] bruxis|8 years ago|reply
My rent is comparable to what I paid in USD in various areas of the SF peninsula. However, move-in costs were outrageous. I have a pet, so that increases it some, but everything here for rent is a multiplier, ie.:
I'm lucky that I didn't have to pay "key money" for this apartment, which is effectively a bribe to the owner that you'll never see back. I also won't ever see my real estate fee or guarantor money again, and it's common to lose at least 1 month deposit due to "move out cleaning fees" (regardless if you keep the place spotless).If you know prices in the bay area, paying 6.5X that rent up front is pretty painful, and not being able to recoup 2.5X your rent is also kind of rough.
I'm lucky that my salary didn't shift too much (aside from currency exchange) when I moved here, but generally salaries are much lower across the board in Japan, even Tokyo.
Food is similarly priced here as SF, depending on what you choose to eat. Some meals can be considered cheap (gyudon, ramen, etc) but you have to remember portion sizes tend to be different and meals don't typically include drinks here. It's also really nice that tipping is not part of Japanese culture, since I personally find it adds a lot to the total cost when you eat out a lot (like my fat ass).
Now, to add a huge caveat to all this, you can live cheaper in Tokyo if you choose to. When I moved here, I chose to keep my lifestyle roughly the same (though I didn't buy another car or motorcycle, so there's some savings). First, if you want to live more cheaply, don't bring a pet. You can also downgrade your lifestyle a fair bit which is an interesting difference from SF. In SF, even a small studio can go for a lot of $$$, but here, you can find small studios for $500-$1500USD relatively easily (whether they accept foreigners or not is a different issue).
TL;DR: Can definitely be cheaper depending on what sacrifices you're willing to make. With no sacrifices, about the same as SF, except up front costs.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|8 years ago|reply
I thought Japan was a non-tipping culture?
[+] [-] lr4444lr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digi_owl|8 years ago|reply
Then you toss banks on top and things really spiral out of control.
[+] [-] user5994461|8 years ago|reply
You'd get the same thing for around €500 in European cities, and it's so much that you already need your parents to help you.
/s
[+] [-] branchless|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheAdamAndChe|8 years ago|reply
My experience is in a city that has not been positively affected by globalization. I know the housing market is quite different in the tech hubs of the country.
[+] [-] easilyBored|8 years ago|reply
Not sure about others but personally the yard, larger home, parking etc are a huge quality of life boost. I can sacrifice for a while, but eventually need to enjoy life a bit.
[+] [-] sleepingeights|8 years ago|reply
The US "beef industry" irresponsibly used antibiotics to artificially fatten their cattle, causing everyone who ate their products to also consume those antibiotics. Also, the US' own companies push sugar saturated products to their youth without any disposition to responsibility, where sugar is known and has been known to cause serious health deficits.
The US practices culling of their population to reduce density.
edit: People have trouble viewing it in this light. A simpler way is to view it through its parallel in warfare. European and "civilized" warfare is the sudden loss of large portions of the population and able bodied men through massive violence organized by their "ruling parties". "Jungle" warfare is one where the losses on the participants isn't high per encounter, but is very high over the duration of their "war".
Despite the West criticizing Mao and Stalin of killing off many of their citizens, the US can also be found to have killed off many of their own citizens through the use of subtler methods.
For example, as the US' population became aware of the detrimental effects of tobacco (whose mortal danger to health was known in the West's "ruling class and educated" for centuries), the population loss related to tobacco induced health deficits dropped, while other issues began to surface and increase. The observable culling of the population is far more active in the US than it is in Russia or China for example (once one becomes aware that it is more subtle, and more like 'jungle/islander warfare')
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|8 years ago|reply
Just fyi, if you only include Tokyo, price nearly doubles. It doesn't make the best comparison because Tokyo + 3 prefecture = 38 million people with over 5000 square miles.
However, that chart alone is very compelling because it shows something that you don't see anywhere else; declining housing price.
Is centralized and lax housing regulations the main reason for this? I don't think the author makes a strong argument, but it's certainly a contributing reason.
[+] [-] loudin|8 years ago|reply
http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/26/why-are-japanese-homes-di...
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
There used to be an Australian guy who went around buying and fixing undervalued houses in Japan. While out in his searches, he'd point out the many unoccupied houses.
As an aside, when is Japan going to reconsider how it calculates unemployment? As it is, their unemployment is like 3.7% yet many many younger people work for as temps, which is sort of counterintuitive for a very tight labor market.
[+] [-] Retric|8 years ago|reply
For comparison the US median home price is ~220k. But, the Median price in Fairfax VA which is 30 miles from DC is $510,000. Chantilly VA which is ~35 miles from DC is 400k.
[+] [-] ekianjo|8 years ago|reply
For this price you get a shack in the far suburbs of Tokyo. Anything remotely close to the center goes to 100 million yen. And prices are going up before of the Olympic Bubble, too. It's completely crazy.
[+] [-] bane|8 years ago|reply
I never really stopped to figure that maybe it was just foreign stuff that was crazy expensive. One of the really eye opening things I've learned in the last few years is how relatively affordable housing can be...even within the Tokyo city limits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w -- older homes can be much much cheaper.
Here's a $1600/mo house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2XMhqNBx8
This needs to be considered against local incomes of course, so they're a bit less tempting to locals than to American foreigners from ultra expensive coastal cities.
Part of this seems to be the particular Japanese combination of the shrinking and aging population + continued attempts at maintaining GDP via construction works + cultural preference for new living arrangements instead of old construction. But like anyplace, you pay for where you live and there are certainly incredibly expensive places to live.
Outside of living arrangements, public transport, food, clothes, and so on...everything except for personal vehicles is relatively affordable on a foreigner's salary.
However, salaries in Japan are surprisingly (sometimes shockingly low). I think I've heard that a person working in a regular "salaryman" job can expect to earn around their age * 10,000 USD. So if you're 30, you'll make around $30k USD. This information is a bit old, so expect it to be a little higher, but this table [1] from 2014 suggests a 32.4 year old computer programmer makes an average of 4,256,000 yen per year..or about $38k. Some occupations can make significantly more...but it's interesting to find yourself on this table and consider it.
1 - http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Annual_Salary_by_Occupati...
[+] [-] chrischen|8 years ago|reply
In the US a Google engineer can be making $160k while a teacher in some southern state could be making $50k.
[+] [-] kalleboo|8 years ago|reply
Remember Japan doesn't really have inflation, so... not really. When they raised the sales tax to 8% it was an unexpectedly large problem because so many vending machines suddenly couldn't just charge 100 yen as they had for a decade, and raising by 10 yen (the smallest coin accepted by vending machines) would be too big a raise
[+] [-] Dunan|8 years ago|reply
(Can confirm; age 40, 18 years with the company, base salary just over $40k.)
[+] [-] a_c|8 years ago|reply
Can someone provide some figures on what one could rent in SV?
[+] [-] barking|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|8 years ago|reply
That's a bit deceptive though because the US has huge tracts of wilderness land that aren't forested; they're deserts, tundra, plains, etc.
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Razengan|8 years ago|reply
Just watch any of the street tours and stroll-throughs on YouTube [0][1][2]. There is almost a serene quality despite the crowds, and so very far from the dystopian "cyberpunk" vision that we've been taught to expect from "megacities."
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnTvMbeXtqw
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95GlwrqE44U
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy4GX-YbmmU
[+] [-] didip|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abalone|8 years ago|reply
"Existing condominium units’ average prices rose by 3.73%... New condominium units’ average prices skyrocketed by 21.2%..."
"...last year was particularly bad for housing starts in Tokyo Metropolitan Area, with 9.9% less new condominiums (40,449 units) being put on the market – the lowest level since 2010..." [1]
Basically the article has a politicized tone, comes from an urbanism advocacy group, ignores the recession, ignores Abenomics, misrepresents the true fluctuation of the real estate market in urban centers, jumps straight to "regulation" as the culprit, and is strikingly dismissive of environmental concerns.
[1] https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Japan/Price-History
[+] [-] rdl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mberning|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor-vehicle_inspection_(Japa...
Its possible given that Japanese don't like used houses that something similar exists for purchase of a used house, perhaps an inspection that costs $25K would discourage used house purchases.
[+] [-] contingencies|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|8 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_%28Japan%29
"...Tokyo [...] is still growing at a rapid clip, despite the fact that Japan as a whole hit its population peak in 2008."
This is probably not sustainable.
[+] [-] Street_Bounty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodandsteel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acd|8 years ago|reply
The JCB japan central bank started money printing easy money by dumping interest rate after the last Japanese property bubble. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble
House prices should be cheap as the population decreases but the house are already built.
[+] [-] timr|8 years ago|reply
“Housing is seriously unaffordable in Tokyo-Yokohama, with a 4.4 Average Multiple (average house price divided by average household income). Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto has an Average Multiple of 3.5 and is thus rated as moderately unaffordable. Despite these ratings, Japan has the most affordable housing of any megacities (over 10,000,000 residents) in the Demographia Survey.”
If you think real estate in Japan is "affordable", you need only talk to Japanese people. Salaries here are low, and the economy has been stagnant for decades. Younger people tend to live with their parents until marriage, and if you ask them why, they'll tell you: they can't afford to live on their own.
Yes, Construction is rampant, but that's mostly because buildings here are ripped down every few decades, not because cities are necessarily building more or larger buildings. There's just tons of churn.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you want affordable cities, a big part of the "secret" is tanking your economy for a few decades.
[+] [-] ska|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saosebastiao|8 years ago|reply
And even if it were bad by global standards, I'm pretty sure stagnant wages and declining housing costs is a way better situation than ours with declining wages and rapidly increasing housing costs.
[+] [-] Retric|8 years ago|reply
Tokyo added around 1.5 million people from 2000 to now. That takes a lot of construction.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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