
In Japan, Home Prices Stay Flat - jseliger
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-home-prices-stay-flat-11554210002
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stevenwoo
For international comparison sake, this graph is useful. One has to select
Japan to add it to the chart.

[https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2016/03/31/global-h...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2016/03/31/global-house-prices)

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hikarudo
Try selecting Brazil in the Economist link. Are houses there really that
expensive?

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haolez
The government started giving really cheap credit to low income families to be
able to buy houses around 2008/2009.

What they achieve instead was a 10x variation in house prices. It backfired
and now the only ones buying here are the ones willing to take huge debts that
will last 30 years. It’s probably a bubble.

~~~
gcb0
not for the reasons you think. Most construction monopolies held to the new
units hopping that the affordable housing rules would be removed by the
incomming change of government.

also, have to check if that graph is for listed or sold prices. most places go
for less than 60% of list price

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haolez
> most places go for less than 60% of list price

As of today, maybe. But we had to endure several years of inflated prices.
It's hard to not correlate the inflation directly to the government's monetary
policy.

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mlindner
This is a ridiculous article. The housing market in Japan is drastically
different than the US. Notably most people don't live in nor buy used houses.
When you buy a house it's with the intent to tear it down and build a new
house.

The houses are built cheaply with minimal insulation and no internal air
(every room is heated/cooled independently, if at all, often with gas burning
heaters that emit the exhaust directly into the room). When the wind blows it
blows through the building. Houses don't last more than a few decades and are
torn down. Houses are depreciating assets in Japan, like cars.

Edit: Yes we need to deregulate and dezone housing laws, especially in major
metropolitan areas in the US, however that's not what causes Japanese housing
to be cheap. It's apples and oranges and different expectations among the
populace on what a house even is.

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anunes
> This is a ridiculous article.

It is ridiculous because it presents a reality different from the US? I found
it quite interesting.

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mlindner
It tries to make the claim that Japanese house building is for some reason
superior when in reality its just shoddy construction turning an appreciating
asset into a depreciating one. If the house value stays flat then that's
unusual, they usually lose value over time.

~~~
theredbox
It's not inferior. It has to adhere to different constraints than houses in
the US or Germany.

They chose to not do the insulation/heating part because of earthquakes.

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bobthepanda
One underdiscussed factor when talking about housing prices in the US is that
average house size has shot up over the decades.
[https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-
size/](https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/)

Housing is going to be more expensive if people are buying 2.5x more house.

~~~
ngngngng
This is often what's missing in the discussions I see on facebook among people
that have no knowledge of real estate. "My parents bought a house that they
paid off in 5 years on his meager salary!" Well yeah, but it was half the size
of your apartment, Susan.

This should absolutely be talked about more often.

~~~
akgerber
Where can I buy an affordable new 700-1200 square foot fee-simple townhouse on
a small urban lot with no parking because I don't have a car? They're illegal
to build in almost all American cities, but a huge component of Japan's
housing stock.

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tlb
Get one with a garage, and turn the garage into an office.

Typical Northern California architecture, which includes a garage that most
people don't park their car in, provides a lot of spaces to start projects in.
It's better to start a project in a garage than in a spare bedroom or
basement, because if your project starts taking off you can have customers and
employees there without awkwardness.

It only works if the climate is good enough to work in a sheltered but
unheated space year round.

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rootusrootus
Doesn't Japan also have a big problem with depreciating houses? I.e. everyone
wants a brand new house, so the value of the structure drops rapidly and it
gets torn down after a number of years and replaced?

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bobthepanda
Is that a problem, or a different market mindset? Why is it considered good
that housing is an investment basically guaranteed to shoot up in value and
become unaffordable to young people? Housing is illiquid, it’s one of the last
things people should probably be using as an investment; otherwise we get
repeats of the foreclosure crisis as people rake out mortgages on their house
to support their lifestyle.

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kevin_thibedeau
This ignores the fact that houses in Japan are treated as disposable property
and not investment vehicles. Only the land has value. A 40 year old house is a
liability.

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helen___keller
It's worth noting that home prices are often distorted from supply/demand due
to speculation.

Still, there can be no doubt that Japan's approach to urban design (tightly
packed walkable neighborhoods connected to urban centers by a web of transit)
scales much better than the approach taken in the states. In the states people
scream "we are full" as they sit in endless traffic in cities with an MSA
population of maybe 5 million. Meanwhile the Tokyo metropolis, depending on
how you measure its limits, can be considered between 10 to 30 million strong.

~~~
kurthr
And the Tokyo growth rate is 0! It was 2 Million people in 1900. It has been
the same population for 10 years, and it's shrinking into 2020.

[http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/tokyo-
populati...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/tokyo-population/)

If you want to work in Tokyo, you can take a 1-2hr train ride each way, like
the locals do... or you (and your family) can live in a typical 600sq ft
apartment.

I love Tokyo, riding the transit and walking around the streets, but be honest
about what it is, how people live, and how it got that way. I also love my 12
min commute, back yard garden, and walkable neighborhood in a rapidly growing
"metropolis" of 1 million that barely existed 50 years ago.

~~~
helen___keller
>I also love my 12 min commute, back yard garden, and walkable neighborhood in
a rapidly growing "metropolis" of 1 million that barely existed 50 years ago.

May I ask where you live? Sounds like a dream, but also sounds fairly
disconnected from the urban reality that many people face. If the jobs for
your industry are in a big coastal city, you'd need to be a multimillionaire
for the lifestyle you're describing.

~~~
kurthr
Nope, SillyValley. Live with 2 room mates and pay less than $2k/mo for a 3/2
with a nice yard in a walkable neighborhood (for music, groceries, food &
drink). I've lived in multiple places and I've never had a longer working
commute than when I was an off-campus grad student.

It's harder if you've got 2 incomes (one in the city the other elsewhere), or
you want to live in the Mission with the cool kids (and bum poop), but as a
single it's not that hard. You have to make compromises, but they aren't Tokyo
compromises.

Now I do hate the empty lots driven by Prop13 and 30 years speculation... and
I think the current trend of 5-7 story "mixed use" with inadequate parking,
inadequate roads, and inadequate transit (sorry a bus line doesn't count)
placed next to single story residential is stupid and will cause more problems
than it solves.

I also don't see a good local solution for homeless in a place where a parking
space is >$20 a day. You're not going to find a livable space for less than a
parking place... but it's the same in Tokyo.

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helen___keller
Maybe we're splitting hairs, but if you're paying 1.5 or 1.8 a month rent
after you split 3 ways, that's around $5000 a month rent for a 3 bedroom and
at city rental yields that's likely a 1.5-mil-plus unit (for ownership), which
was kind of my point. If you want to be a homeowner with this property you
need to be a multimillionaire. If you look at properties worth 1.5-mil-plus in
Tokyo, rather than the average middle class house, I'm sure your opinion of
the Japanese lifestyle would be different.

The tradeoffs are just as bad as in Tokyo, they're just different tradeoffs.
Instead of a tiny house with poor heat insulation with a 50 minute train ride,
you have 2 roommates and still pay a hefty sum of rent. That's a no-go for
many people, especially those with families.

~~~
kurthr
You don't need to be a millionaire to either rent or buy a million dollar
house. You do need ~$1-200k down payment, but that's not millions.

I have the option to rent part if a house, but I've also lived alone or shared
$2k/mo total in condo/town in the same area without a garden. A 600sqft apt in
Tokyo is about $700k+, but it's true rents (for ethnic Japanese) are lower
(not so much for gaijin)... although you need to own to have a traditional
wife/family. You also have no option of living in a 200m sq house in any case.

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dwighttk
Japan’s population is shrinking, right?

 _didn’t read the article... no wsj subscription_

~~~
keeganjw
Houses in the country side are super abundant because so many young people
moved to cities. But this article talks about housing Tokyo, where demand has
been very strong over the last 20 years. They kept prices low by letting
developers build lots of housing, densely. A lot of the housing policy is set
by the central government and is more insulated from NIMBY complaints. Also,
it's much more common for housing to be prefabbed in factories and assembled
on site.

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jeffbax
Related:

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/la...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/laissez-
faire-in-tokyo.html)

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/th...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/the-
japanese-zoning-system.html)

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ezoe
Japanese house typically can't be usable after 50 years. That's because of
humidity, frequent typhoons, and earthquakes.

New building regulations will be introduced every time new anti-earthquake
building tech was invented. So the old houses which doesn't satisfy these
regulations will be devalued soon.

That's why nobody want to live in a old house. Or more like nobody can be able
to live in a old house.

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tasubotadas
If only somebody could have known that fixing supply in the market, will also
fix the prices.

[https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-
housing-...](https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-
costs-tokyo)

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keeganjw
Anyone have a version of this not blocked by the paywall? Thanks.

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option
what is the population growth in Japan, again? /s

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shereadsthenews
Tokyo added more than ten percent to its population in the last 15 years. The
reason housing is cheap there is because they have a policy of building it.

[https://marketurbanismreport.com/tokyos-affordable-
housing-s...](https://marketurbanismreport.com/tokyos-affordable-housing-
strategy-build/)

~~~
mlindner
No the reason housing is cheap is because housing is a depreciating asset
because of poor construction quality.

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akgerber
Do you think Silicon Valley and Westchester County tract homes are
appreciating due to their superior construction quality?

(There are many far nicer houses in the Midwest facing abandonment.)

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mlindner
Those houses have insulation in the walls and when the wind blows it doesn't
blow through the building. Oh and they have internal heating.

~~~
shereadsthenews
Not sure which Silicon Valley you are referring to. My house in that place has
no insulation in the walls nor in any other place and none of the windows
close properly so the breeze is steady throughout the interior. Of course they
are /historic/ windows so I can't fix any of them.

