Real Estate Japan Blog

In Tokyo, that’s true. A fairer comparison would be average commute times in places that are built around cars versus ones built around trains. Average commute in Austin Texas is 22 minutes one way: https://www.ktalnews.com/news/business/shreveport-has-one-of-shortest-… Average commute time in greater Tokyo is double that: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-work-commute-time-ja…

Japan, where the economy has been flat and the population has been falling for a while now is perhaps not a great counter example. Oddly enough, according to this: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-affordable-is-it-to-buy-… homes in the US are still more affordable than those in Japan. I only did a quick search and clicked on the first result, btw, so take that with a boulder of salt.

According to the Japanese Ministry of Land, Industry, Transportation and Tourism, 29% of kyu-taishin buildings suffered major damage in the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, with 14% totally collapsing. For post-1981 shin-taishin buildings, the rates were 8% and 3% respectively. Reducing your chances of damage by two thirds, or of collapse by nearly four fifths, is pretty substantial. https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/are-you-prepared-for-the-nex…

This source says 59 min (in japanese). https://www.athome.co.jp/contents/at-research/vol33/ one in english is here: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-work-commute-time-ja… This one is 45 min ... though that is all of Japan, not Tokyo specific. btw, I think Tokyo is great. But I think these articles set bad expectations sometimes and I have met a few foreigners that were totally disappointed/burnt out when moving to Tokyo.

In Japan, the building code requires every room to have an air vent [1]. Initially I was skeptical of them and was looking to close them to save on heating costs in the winter. But after doing a little research, I decided they are probably best left open to reduce condensation and mold growth. Now I'm curious how effective they are at keeping down CO2 levels at night. I would like to try this experiment in my house. [1] https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/japanese-apartment-air-vents…

The housing space metrics seem very far off from my experience, looking at numbers it seems "Tokyo" means "Tokyo Metropolis", which includes the countryside, mountains, etc. So it's not really comparing the city. If we look at the numbers for Tokyo 23 wards[1] (what would traditionally be called "the city"), we can see they are virtually half than those from Paris or London: 16.5-19.7sqm/person is the range that falls in the median (50%) for Tokyo 23 wards[1]. Only 30% of houses have the minimum recommended of 25sqm/person (so, 70% live UNDER in under 25sqm/person). If the other cities in the graph are correct, that makes Tokyo median size around half of the average of those other cities[2]. So yes, definitely Tokyo housing is tiny. I know it since I live here and talk with people; when I invite someone who is not in tech to my place they all comment on how big my 37 sqm "house" (studio/single room) is, to which I can only agree and laugh/cry inside. I'm happy because I am well for living in Tokyo, but it's still a tiny place compared to my hometown where everyone lives like kings. [1] https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-much-living-space-does-t… [2] I believe I'm using median/average correctly here, but happy for corrections! I check "at what sizes it's 50% of the # of households" and then took that measure. Sorry for mixing medians and averages, but I cannot calculate averages with the numbers I found.

I did do my research. "The median home sale price in New York City as of Quarter 2 was $767K, a 0% change year-over-year. A total of 11489 homes traded, a mere -1% difference compared to the same month last year. In Quarter 2, the median price per square foot was $979, a 6% YoY change. The median home sale price in Manhattan was $1.2M." https://www.propertyshark.com/mason/market-trends/residential/nyc-all "A survey conducted by Recruit of people who bought newly constructed detached houses in the Tokyo metropolitan area in 2021 found that the average purchase price was ¥43.3 million, the highest level since the survey began in 2014." https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01311/#:~:text=A%20survey%20cond… "In September 2020, the average listing price for a newly constructed detached wooden house in Tokyo of between 100-sqm and 300-sqm (1,076 sqft and 3,229 sqft) was: Greater Tokyo Area: ¥36,850,000 ($354,000) Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): ¥42,880,000 ($412,000) Tokyo 23 Wards: ¥59,410,000 ($570,000) Tokyo western suburbs: ¥40,110,000 ($385,000)" https://resources.realestate.co.jp/news/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-a…

Any law will need provisions to prevent corrupt practices. Whether that is easy or difficult should be taken into account, but in this case I don't see the difficulty, because a) Like Japan's lease law[1], it would be possible (and preferable) to limit lease periods b) As I pointed out at the start, someone else can buy the land at at a very low price. > However, if someone bids on the land for that price you must sell. So even if you follow that avoidance strategy, I'm going to buy your land on the cheap. Perhaps I'll have to raise the tax in the meantime without the comparable rent coming in because of the lease agreement you set, but I get your buildings at the end so that's basically become a mortgage. Of course, that possibility could be removed by a rule like having a period where a lease is in the offing where prospective buyers can buy and cancel the lease, punishing those setting low rates. Still, I think this a digression, it's hardly a steel man, which would be more interesting. We may as well say that income tax is rubbish because people can lie to the tax man about their income. [1] https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/leasehold-rights-in-japan-advan…

That sounds like a lot, but 32x is probably less than the differential in the US between downtown manhattan and suburban Jersey or Delaware, and of course there's a whole rural level in the US far below that as well. That said, the whole "tokyo is just turbo-expensive!" thing is, in the broad strokes, generally false. Buying land in high-density commercial districts is going to be expensive, just like if you wanted to build a detached single-family home in downtown manhattan, but to put some hard numbers to it: In September 2020, the average listing price for a newly constructed detached wooden house in Tokyo of between 100-sqm and 300-sqm (1,076 sqft and 3,229 sqft) was: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/news/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-a… > Greater Tokyo Area: ¥36,850,000 ($354,000) > Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): ¥42,880,000 ($412,000) > Tokyo 23 Wards: ¥59,410,000 ($570,000) > Tokyo western suburbs: ¥40,110,000 ($385,000) -- > For July to September 2020, the average sales price for a previously owned detached house in Tokyo was: > Tokyo (23 Wards + Western Suburbs): ¥46,150,000 ($443,000) -This was a year-on-year increase of 5.5% and an increase of 14.6% compared to the April to June period, when sales dropped sharply due to coronavirus social distancing measures. -This was also the highest average sales price since the July to September (3rd quarter) 2018 period of ¥47,020,000. > Tokyo 23 Wards: ¥57,170,000…

> Parasitic implies one party (implied the employee?) is left worse off than otherwise. If these jobs are being accepted normally it's because the local offers are worse and the developer is not good/doesn't want to deal with the international business side (inc. finding clients, negotiating, etc). So it seems that in a free-ish market, this relationship would be strongly symbiotic, right? It's hard to guarantee that the labor side wouldn't have been able to land the contract without the labor re-seller, so it's up to your own personal bias to see this as a service or as predatory. Could go either way but on a case by case basis this is subjective in my opinion. There's not much magic here (well if there is, it can vary greatly), the contracting agencies are middlemen reselling labor that is in various states of compatibility to the company purchasing the labor. Perfectly compatible market actors could be using middlemen when they don't need to, and middlemen are incentivized to make this the case. The usual questions of whether middlemen are good or bad apply and it's not as simple as it being strongly parasitic or strongly symbiotic in any case, it's more like a spectrum which is why I described it as such. A bit of anecdata: I know someone who worked for a contracting firm in NYC that hired Japanese developers (and relocated them) to work in the American market and paid them Japanese wages to work at American companies. The Japanese developers were always happy at…

I do hope you're not considering the highway system as a short-term, disconnected system. Last I checked, it's been a pretty good long-term, networked infrastructure project. How would HSR differ from traditional rail infrastructure in the modern age? Rail was phenomenal pre-affordable automobiles. I get that it was the cornerstone of America's rise to power in the 19th century. But even back in its heyday, it crumbled, pre-automobile. The over development of rail was a massive problem for the American economy due to its limitations. It's expensive to lay rail. It's expensive to maintain. It can't go in all the places roads can. Rail is niche in transportation and does what it does well, mass heavy cargo transpo to far distances, like 1k mile distances. Shorter than that, it's not really that economical. This is why you see lumber, coal, gypsum and other raw materials normally moved on rail. Or slow container goods from coast to coast. It's not used for as many goods as people think. If we, as an economy, dropped just-in-time-inventory practices, yes, rail would come back. Absolutely. But we moved to lean/just-in-time-inventory styles of production. That requires nimble transpo on accessible and prevalent paths to final destinations. Unloading train cars isn't efficient whether it's conexed or binned in small quantities. You better have ordered a few train cars worth of materials in one go to make it worth it. There's a good reason why in many industrial areas the rails are…

You won't have brand new homes in $300k in SV because the land itself is worth more than that due to the heavy demand for housing in what is a comparatively small area, though you might get $300k condos in multi-story buildings if the zoning issues in the Bay Area are addressed. Tokyo isn't a good comparison. The average price for a new home in Tokyo is $600k+ and in the suburbs was almost $400k.(https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-a-… Houston isn't a good example either. Houston has almost no zoning or building regulations, which was on ample display when entire neighborhoods flooded because developers weren't prevented from building houses in flood basins. (CA allows the construction of residential properties in floodplains, which are flat areas that might get flooded if flood control mechanisms fail. In Houston, houses were built in the flood control mechanism.) There are also plenty of places in California where houses and residential units are being built. In LA, for example, several ten thousands of new residential units were built in the downtown/downtown-adjacent units in the past few years. In San Bernardino/Riverside counties, they still have housing stock available from the last building boom. It's not that the people of California pulled that ladder up; it's simply basic market forces: too many people want to live in the nice parts of California.

I believe this figure is for a 1R, which is a studio, averaged across all 23 wards. I got my data from: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-is-the-average-rent-in-to…

You can rent an apartment in Tokyo on a min wage salary. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-housing.ht… https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/tokyo-budget-apartments-what-y… Whats their secret? Sane zoning laws created at the federal level that separate industrial use from residential, but don't segregate humans based on race or class.

Sounds like the have a mix https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/leasehold-rights-in-japan-advan…

Square what you just said with the data: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/how-much-does-an-apartment-cost… Utopia!

> For post-1981 shin-taishin buildings, the rates were 8% and 3% respectively. Reducing your chances of damage by two thirds, or of collapse by nearly four fifths, is pretty substantial. https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/are-you-prepared-f... Yeah, any you can't improve much on these rates anyway from now on. Diminutive returns - no reason for the value of such properties built after 81 to go to zero if they are well built.

In any place where house prices are mostly influenced by home buyers (not investors), the price trends upwards to the ceiling amount that people can afford on their interest repayments: that figure is constrained by income, interest rates, and the percentage of income that is spent on housing. Market sentiment also matters (tends to be less rational!) Perhaps limited house prices in Tokyo are more a reflection of normal incomes of employees? https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/guide-home-mortgage-loans-japan… https://www.tytoncapital.com/projects/get-foreign-mortgage-housing-loa…

This might be outdated given that it is from 2020: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/news/how-much-does-it-cost-to-buy-a… I only mention it because someone brought it up a few days ago when there was a debate on why real estate prices were so high in the USA.

If you define “livable” as 50% of the Tokyo population having less than 17 sq meters of living space per person. Not just college students…everybody. Different strokes, but still… https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-much-living-space-does-t…

This isn't about Brexit or politics. For example, Japan hasn't fully converted to metric, either: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/guide-to-japanese-apartments-fl… > The size of a Japanese-style room is measured by the number of tatami mats: >> Four mat room = 6.12 square meters = 66 square feet >> Six mat room = 9.18 square meters = 98.8 square feet > Most Japanese-style rooms in modern apartments are four or six mats in size.

Note that the study took place in Japan, where diet and alcohol consumption might not be the same as they are in western countries. Also note that the article's definition of "wealthy" was having an income higher than 10 million Yen, which is only about $94,000. In 2016, the average annual salary for a Japanese man in his 50s was 7.4 million Yen.[1] 10 million Yen is only 35% higher than that. [1] https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-salary-japan-occupat…

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/07/02/issues/no-foreign-te… https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/housing-discrimination-again… https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/17/national/social-issues/ha… https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-discrimination-foreign/foreig…

I have a theory that when you get beyond the front door of most Japanese houses they are really like this: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/messiest-houses-in-japan/

I didn't know about Japanese property tax, a quick google shows there are a lot of taxes, 1.7% annually. 2% on registration. + some extras https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/guide-to-japanese-real-estate-t…

What you are forgetting here is that people and the market build houses with a short lifespan in mind. They could as easily build new houses with reinforced concrete. And if there was that much earthquake consideration you would see support structures and dampeners as part of the regulation in non-trivial buildings (https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/earthquake-building-codes-and-t… (Also see regulation in Greece and Italy -- https://earthquaketrack.com/p/greece/recent). The real estate market forces cheap wooden houses. It is not tradition or earthquakes... I feel here in California there is dangerous complacency regarding earthquakes (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/02/03/america-is-not-prep… People fear them but the rarity has transformed the fear into wishful thinking and avoidance.

In comparison to what? It seemed pretty affordable to me when I was there, and based on some data points as well [1]. [1] https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/cost-living-single-person-to…

> Popular cities are still ultra-expensive around the world, in spite of development. Not nearly as expensive than popular cities in the US. To be more precise, many non-US popular cities have a lot more supply of rental units at low cost than most US popular cities. The cheapest apartment available to let immediately in many non-US cities is far cheaper than the cheapest apartment available to let immediately in, say, Los Angeles area or SF. For instance, there's apartments you can let in Tokyo for $500 (or even less!) (https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-can-you-rent-for-500-in-t… but there's literally no equivalent in the US. Like at all (if you find a counterexample please let me know!). That is why allowing dense and tall development (free of NIMBY interference) matters.

Prepare to be surprised :) http://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/what-is-the-average-price-of-a-h… We have a mental model from the 80s. Decades of recessionary prices catches up.

Average rent in Tokyo is about 97,000 yen/month (~$911): http://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/what-is-the-average-rent-in-toky… Granted that's for a relatively tiny space, but still, not that expensive, and that's probably the most expensive metro.