I spent a couple years traveling the world and punctuated my travels with a 2 week stop in Japan (Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto) in May '24. I was not prepared for how inexpensive everything was... much less than several eastern European cities I had just come from, more on par with places like Mexico City.
Intuitively, it would make sense for housing prices to decrease when the demand decreases, supply being equal (It's not like housing deteriorates significantly in the short term).
There is a history of substantially updating building regulations every time a new record is set for largest earthquake in the modern era; and so if you are buying historical, you are buying a less safe property that could kill you.
The last major earthquake updates to the code were in 2000, so there isn’t a lot of historical housing stock without this confounding factor.
Not all of Tokyo is nice either. They also probably won’t rent to “outsiders” without giving any explanation so…
> Here is a startling fact: in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).
But there are interesting experiments going on. Where I live (Toronto) has had a huge build-out of small ~4-500sqf bachelors that were hoovered up by flippers and mom-n-pop landlords. At the peak of the boom, they were selling for ridiculous prices ($800K+) and the poor build quality of everything from elevators (of which there often weren't enough, resulting in lineups and long waits) to water pipes that burst meant that savvy prospective owners stay clear.
There's a correction happening, but people don't want to unload their "investments" at below what they cost and since mortgages are recourse people can't just walk away.
In theory there should be demand for these units from the young, corporate owners, 2nd homes in the city, etc. But the prices have just not come down enough to make any of those worthwhile.
The limits seem to be from legal restrictions on minimum apartment size, not market demand.
That is, I was specifically saying there is a lack of appetite to offer these. Not that there is lack of appetite to buy/rent them.
Doesn't change that it would be nice to have such offerings without having to navigate all of the extra stuff that comes from having roommates.