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An average family in Tokyo can own a new house for $850/month

124 points by jseliger 7y ago

jseliger 7y ago
By contrast consider Conor Dougherty's Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America/dp/0525560211 https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America..., which is about how California in particular works hard to raise the cost of housing. Places like Seattle are a little better, with an emphasis on "little." https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in-seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-fut...
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  That said, Seattle has a grass roots effort right now to try and get social housing on the ballot for November. There are folks here fighting for housing as a place to live, not as an investment.
- clairity 7y ago
  a link to a summary of golden gates on nytimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/books/review/golden-gates-housing-conor-dougherty.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/books/review/golden-gates... i’m of the opinion that weiner’s various housing bills, while lovely and worth passage in their own right, didn’t go far enough to break this construction gridlock in california.
claudeganon 7y ago
Zoning is important, but let’s also remember that single-family housing isn’t really a speculative investment vehicle in Japan like it is here. You can either have private equity buying up foreclosed homes and house flipping tv shows or housing being used as housing that most people can afford. America chooses the former, Japan, the latter.
- hkmurakami 7y ago
  Iirc commercial building values and high rise tower condo prices in central Tokyo are up due to PE / speculation.
- dvasdekis 7y ago
  Does america have progressive or flat land taxes? Progressive land taxes (higher % tax of land value if you own more of it) make intuitive sense for housing affordability, but I read the Wikipedia[1] and only understood that 'it depends'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
  - toast0 7y ago
    My understanding is that most jurisdictions, but certainly California and Washington state have two types of property tax levies. 'Ad valorem' aka by value, which is a percentage of assessed value (one flat rate for all parcels, not progrssive), and per parcel taxes which is just a specific dollar amount added to each separate parcel. There's some state by state adjustments to try to benefit owner occupied properties, but the degree to which it helps varies greatly; the California owner occupied exemption saves abou $70/year in taxes (woo?). I'm not aware of progressive property taxes, but there's a lot of different jurisdictions.
- twblalock 7y ago
  > You can either have private equity buying up foreclosed homes and house flipping tv shows or housing being used as housing that most people can afford. America chooses the former, Japan, the latter. Even in very expensive markets like Silicon Valley, foreclosures are typically less than 1% of total home sales. Homes are not a speculative investment either. Recent studies have shown investing in housing to be safer than investing in stocks, but with similar returns, over a time period stretching back to 1870: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/the-case-for-real-estate-as-investment.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/th...
  - 7y ago
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
> The first thing to note is that in Japan, housing isn’t an investment. It’s a place to live. The country’s slow population growth means that increases in property values aren’t guaranteed I feel like this is a misleading way to put it. Japanese houses decrease in value, generally quite severely - the conventional wisdom is that after a few decades you might as well just tear it down and build a new one. So there's very real option value you're losing in the Japanese model; if you have to move in a decade or two, you won't be able to get back the equity you put in.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  A big component of this is that building codes aren’t really enforced for the construction of single-family housing in Japan. Even if you wanted to buy a used home, you run the risk that shoddy construction could put you at serious danger in the event of the country’s not-so-infrequent natural disasters. This is one reason why most people tear down and rebuild.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    So people rebuild houses just in case for a not-so-frequent natural disaster? Or are there other reasons too?
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      Yeah there are other reasons, from related insurance concerns to cultural/quasi-spiritual beliefs that old homes acquire the “fortunes” of their previous owners. Also, said lack of building code enforcement, makes new home construction cheaper, faster, and more plentiful. But there are also A LOT of earthquakes, typhoons, and floods in Japan, so it’s not exactly a minor concern either, especially when houses are typically seen as something you buy for life.
      - SapporoChris 7y ago
        On the flip side. I have a friend she is native Japanese, divorced, clerical worker with low income. She got a used house in the suburbs of a small city. (30 minute bus/walk commute) She basically only paid for the price of the land. The house itself is in good shape and the only maintenance issues have been the ones you'd expect from a twenty year old house. Heater replacement, a kitchen vent. I've been inside the house and I see no evidence of shoddy construction. (not that I'm trained to spot it). My point the housing market like it is makes it much less likely for people to become homeless. Japan's homeless numbers reflect this.
gok 7y ago
This article is citing another article from the same source [1] "The typical Tokyo metro area starter home would be an apartment (around 750 square feet) or detached wooden house (around 970 square feet) located in the outer suburbs. According to Zoe Ward of Japan Property Central, the average Tokyo office worker has about a one-hour commute by train each morning." So part of the answer is that homes are tiny by American standards, and it's not actually in Tokyo proper. [1] https://www.curbed.com/2016/6/21/11946606/starter-homes-sweden-france-japan https://www.curbed.com/2016/6/21/11946606/starter-homes-swed...
- twblalock 7y ago
  A lot of the people with hour-long commutes are not going long distances by American standards. They live in "Tokyo proper" (which is really more of a prefecture than a city) or the neighboring cities.
- SECProto 7y ago
  Even square footage isn't a perfect metric for cross-national comparison. For example, furniture in Japan (at places like Nitori) is often designed for smaller spaces. When I lived there, a $300 couch fit[1] perfectly in my living room, while it would've looked hilariously undersized in any North American house. I was more comfortable in that apartment, approx 480 sqft, than I was in a 1000 sqft apartment I had in North America [1] たとえば https://www.nitori-net.jp/ec/product/1141031-1140061s/ https://www.nitori-net.jp/ec/product/1141031-1140061s/
  - gok 7y ago
    No doubt. American homes don't use floor space very efficiently.
codesuki 7y ago
I think this headline is misleading in 2 ways. 1. yes you might get a house at this price but it's either 1-2 hours out of the city center (which is fine, just saying Tokyo is large.) Or alternatively it's in bad neighborhoods. (bad is relative if you are from the US) 2. your house will most likely look like this: https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. here are listings: https://www.homes.co.jp/smp/kodate/shinchiku/tokyo/list/ https://www.homes.co.jp/smp/kodate/shinchiku/tokyo/list/ there are nice ones in the list. I am just saying that this is the eastern country side of Tokyo (check the map) when the title probably makes everyone think something different.
- jseliger 7y ago
  Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. This is the sort of thing that markets solve really well. If you want a dwelling unit with those properties, pay for it. If they're less important to you than cost, don't. If one is $300,000 and the other $600,000, it's very reasonable to choose affordability and go to a park.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    The problem comes when you cannot afford to pay for it.
    - uoylj 7y ago
      It's almost like people aren't entitled to everything they want in life simply because they exist.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      That really isn't a problem. So long as you can afford something where your basic needs are met: four walls, clean, safe, sturdy, etc, nobody's entitled to waterfront views. The idea is you create value through your work and utilize the proceeds to upgrade your residence, if that's what you value.
      - 7y ago
api 7y ago
"But zoning may be the real winner here. Japan’s zoning laws are national—so no local weirdness hampering construction and driving up prices. The system has 12 zones progressing from residential to commercial and industrial. Any buildings allowed in zone 1 are also allowed in the following zones. Basically: Housing can be built almost anywhere, even on extremely skinny or odd-sized parcels of land. This increases the amount of usable residential space and helps builders continue to meet demand, keeping housing costs under control. " Fighting for something like this here will be one of the fights of the younger generations, otherwise they will be permanently locked out in any city with jobs. (There is plenty of housing where there are no jobs.) Local NIMBY zoning must die. Its basically a cartel: collusion to restrict supply and drive prices artificially high.
mcguire 7y ago
Japan may not be the ideal economic model. In the 1980s, Japan had an enormous economic bubble. (This was the period when MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, was the ultimate Platonic ideal of how to run a country's economy and the Japanese Fifth Generation computing project was going to eliminate "programming" as a job category.) This bubble burst in 1990-1991. It was bad. "GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $4.36 trillion in nominal terms, real wages fell around 5%,... Many Japanese companies replaced a large part of their workforce with temporary workers, who had little job security and fewer benefits. As of 2009, these non-traditional employees made up more than a third of the labor force. For the wider Japanese workforce, wages have stagnated. From their peak in 1997, real wages have since fallen around 13%..[as of 2013]." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) "Japan's annual land prices averaged nationwide have finally risen since the asset bubble collapse, though only mildly at 0.1%, a process that has taken 26 years to show up statistically. [undated] "By 2004, prime "A" property in Tokyo's financial districts had slumped to less than 1 percent of its peak, and Tokyo's residential homes were less than a tenth of their peak,... "The Nikkei 225 at the Tokyo Stock Exchange plunged from a height of 38,915 at the end of December 1989 to 14,309 at the end of August 1992. By 11 March 2003, it plunged to the post-bubble low of 7,862." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble "After a long climb during the decades of Japan’s economic miracle, prices exploded in the late eighties in the frenzy of the bubble economy. Over the following decade, prices collapsed by over 80%, hitting a low in 2002. Since then however, prices have increased and we are not in the middle of a stable period of growth with a positive outlook for the future." https://housingjapan.com/buy/history/ https://housingjapan.com/buy/history/ [I note: "Housing Japan is the leading real estate agent for international clients looking to rent, buy or invest in the Tokyo property market."] "Tokyo’s property market has had its ups and downs. At the peak of the bubble in 1989, some condos were selling for more than 1 billion yen, and buildings with more than 30 floors started springing up. "After the bubble, prices plummeted. In 2002, the price per tsubo was about half that of the bubble era. But easier housing loans and low interest rates helped spur demand for new condos." https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Tokyo-property-prices-near-bubble-era-levels https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Tokyo-prop... [Has a nice graph of Tokyo condo prices, per-tsubo (3.3 sq. meters).]
TomMckenny 7y ago
> The first thing to note is that in Japan, housing isn’t an investment. It’s a place to live. Fixing this can be a major obstacle in countries with inadequate pension systems. In countries where dependency on rising property values is the chief or sole form of retirement planing for vast numbers of people, fixing a broken housing market becomes dependent on fixing the retirement system. And when land values are consistently propped up by government to a greater degree than other investments, it moves people even more into land speculation as their retirement investment because of its artificial safety.
deleted 7y ago
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exabrial 7y ago
You can do the exact same thing in nearly every part of the USA except Blue cities where regulation has moved home ownership out of the poor's reach. For example, California, new construction requires an electric vehicle outlet in garages. If you're poor, you have much better things to be spending $1500 than some charger outlet they will literally _never use_. Instead, regulations on how people want to live their lives and shelter themselves cement a cycle of poverty into these areas.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  Extreme political bias aside, you need to check your facts. This article from 2014 estimates the cost for the required 40/80A breaker/conduit at a whopping $50. This is in contrast to the higher cost of adding such capability later. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095076_ca-to-require-new-buildings-to-be-wired-for-electric-car-charging-stations https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095076_ca-to-require-n...
- maxsilver 7y ago
  An EV charger only costs about $400. Add $100 or so, if you don't already have a 240v line there pre-construction. This seems like a totally fair thing for regulation to require, considering the majority of Californian homes are going to be hanging around for 40+ years or more.
soared 7y ago
The cultural differences make this comparison less meaningful than you’d expect. In Japan you absolutely never have friends over to your house or apartment. Everyone meets at bars or restaurants. Similar to nyc, many apartments in Tokyo are a few hundred square feet and literally only serve as a place to sleep and shower. That means houses aren’t such a major thing and so the Japanese invest way less time and energy (and place less importance on) their homes. My parents lived in japan and I have a few friends there. I spoke with a friend who works in graphic design on the outskirts of Tokyo who doesn’t even own a fridge - all his meals are eaten outside of his home.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The article has almost no content, but one of the three facts it provides is that Tokyo has 3-bedroom houses on offer for anyone who wants one, for $300K and 1% annual interest. It's not about 300sqft apartments.
- dionidium 7y ago
  > The cultural differences make this comparison less meaningful than you’d expect If these cultural differences are so strong, then surely a market that allows new construction in the U.S. will tend toward creating housing that meets those needs. If it doesn't, it's probably because people place more value on other things (e.g. proximity, price, etc). The fact is that the market doesn't even get a chance to work itself out in the U.S. because cities encode a particular set of living preferences in law.
- lolcopterpilot 7y ago
  > absolutely never have friends over to your house or apartment Absolute statements like that are just clearly not true. I've been to Japanese friends' apartments, even visited friends' family barbecue or wine tasting night. Less common doesn't mean it never happens.
  - jbay808 7y ago
    I agree. When I lived in Japan, I was invited to (local) friends' places often, including for a couple of kotatsu sleepover parties. It was probably more frequent than being invited to a friend's place in Vancouver. Probably because most of my friends in Vancouver live in sharehouses or basement suites where they aren't allowed to have guests by their landlord, while my friends in Japan had small but respectable spaces that they had much more permissive ownership of.
bane 7y ago
Decent family houses in Tokyo are definitely more expensive than this, but not hugely (also Kyoto surprisingly). There's some interesting things about the Japanese housing market, for example, many homes become "worthless" after the end of the mortgage -- so they depreciate and are more like buying cars. Tokyo is also an absolutely enormous city with even more massive metro area. There's very few examples on the planet that come close. Tokyo is sometimes called "the infinite city" for good reason. This means that yes, you can pay huge money for a coffin in some areas, and little money for an entire house elsewhere in the same city. New York is kind of the same way in that respect, but is actually still smaller and less diverse. I could write a ton more, but I think this series from "Life Where I'm From" which is pointed out in the article is a fantastic overview of housing for a nuclear family in Tokyo. How an Average Family in Tokyo Can Buy a New Home - https://youtu.be/iGbC5j4pG9w https://youtu.be/iGbC5j4pG9w Brand New Japanese House Tour - https://youtu.be/Jv6SbFlZMbU https://youtu.be/Jv6SbFlZMbU Are Japanese Homes Really Worthless After 30 Years? - https://youtu.be/1SiPGP_BDS4 https://youtu.be/1SiPGP_BDS4 Old Japanese Apartment vs. New House - https://youtu.be/SI3_PJoAa04 https://youtu.be/SI3_PJoAa04 What a Very Old Japanese House is Like - https://youtu.be/r8zECc4JM1Y https://youtu.be/r8zECc4JM1Y Living in Traditional Japanese Townhouses: Kyo-machiya - https://youtu.be/NljSnaZ2WiY https://youtu.be/NljSnaZ2WiY Checking Out New Japanese House Design and Technology - https://youtu.be/5AiLSyNhEXg https://youtu.be/5AiLSyNhEXg I'd also point out this young couple who are expecting their first child (Paolo from Tokyo) What a Japanese Moving Company in Tokyo is like - https://youtu.be/q0RX59G2jaA https://youtu.be/q0RX59G2jaA $1500 Japanese Apartment Tour in Tokyo Shibuya - https://youtu.be/Qtc_zrpRIs8 https://youtu.be/Qtc_zrpRIs8 Average Daily Living Cost in Tokyo Japan - https://youtu.be/xrgrBJc-64c https://youtu.be/xrgrBJc-64c
jbarham 7y ago
For anyone interested in Japanese house architecture, the book Jutaku, published by Phaidon, is fantastic: https://au.phaidon.com/store/architecture/jutaku-japanese-houses-9780714869629/ https://au.phaidon.com/store/architecture/jutaku-japanese-ho...
lolcopterpilot 7y ago
An average family in Tokyo does not live in a detached house so the whole argument is false. About 27% of the units are detached houses and the ratio is decreasing a bit. Plus Tokyo is almost 100km wide. That's a huge area and of course there are places where housing is dirt cheap because people are fleeing away.
nikkwong 7y ago
As someone who's invested pretty heavily in real estate over the last few years (Seattle) I sometimes ponder if we are all eventually destined to a fate similar to that of Japan's. It seems to me that the US is only a superpower because we were geographically fortunate to not share contiguous borders with Europe post WWII and we've taken that for granted. Policy makers in the US don't have a long enough horizon to adequately plan for the future; and birthrates are projected to fall—it's hard to say how much, but, eventually, even below replacement rates (?). As of late I have started to question the long-term prospect of indefinite economic growth, and what the implications of challenging the status-quo here are. I would be interested as to what people's perspectives are around the likelihood of advanced nations inevitably sharing a fate similar to Japan's.
turtlebits 7y ago
I think the more interesting point is the interest rate. 1% @ 35 years is exceptionally low. In the US, say at a 3.5% and 30 year loan, your monthly payment would be closer to $1,350. Add property taxes and insurance, and you are probably closer to $1,500.

124 points by jseliger 7y ago

By contrast consider Conor Dougherty's Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America/dp/0525560211 https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Gates-Fighting-Housing-America..., which is about how California in particular works hard to raise the cost of housing. Places like Seattle are a little better, with an emphasis on "little." https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in-seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-fut...

Pfhreak 7y ago
That said, Seattle has a grass roots effort right now to try and get social housing on the ballot for November. There are folks here fighting for housing as a place to live, not as an investment.
clairity 7y ago
a link to a summary of golden gates on nytimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/books/review/golden-gates-housing-conor-dougherty.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/books/review/golden-gates... i’m of the opinion that weiner’s various housing bills, while lovely and worth passage in their own right, didn’t go far enough to break this construction gridlock in california.

claudeganon 7y ago

Zoning is important, but let’s also remember that single-family housing isn’t really a speculative investment vehicle in Japan like it is here. You can either have private equity buying up foreclosed homes and house flipping tv shows or housing being used as housing that most people can afford. America chooses the former, Japan, the latter.

hkmurakami 7y ago
Iirc commercial building values and high rise tower condo prices in central Tokyo are up due to PE / speculation.
dvasdekis 7y ago
Does america have progressive or flat land taxes? Progressive land taxes (higher % tax of land value if you own more of it) make intuitive sense for housing affordability, but I read the Wikipedia[1] and only understood that 'it depends'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
- toast0 7y ago
  My understanding is that most jurisdictions, but certainly California and Washington state have two types of property tax levies. 'Ad valorem' aka by value, which is a percentage of assessed value (one flat rate for all parcels, not progrssive), and per parcel taxes which is just a specific dollar amount added to each separate parcel. There's some state by state adjustments to try to benefit owner occupied properties, but the degree to which it helps varies greatly; the California owner occupied exemption saves abou $70/year in taxes (woo?). I'm not aware of progressive property taxes, but there's a lot of different jurisdictions.
twblalock 7y ago
> You can either have private equity buying up foreclosed homes and house flipping tv shows or housing being used as housing that most people can afford. America chooses the former, Japan, the latter. Even in very expensive markets like Silicon Valley, foreclosures are typically less than 1% of total home sales. Homes are not a speculative investment either. Recent studies have shown investing in housing to be safer than investing in stocks, but with similar returns, over a time period stretching back to 1870: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/the-case-for-real-estate-as-investment.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/th...
- 7y ago

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

> The first thing to note is that in Japan, housing isn’t an investment. It’s a place to live. The country’s slow population growth means that increases in property values aren’t guaranteed I feel like this is a misleading way to put it. Japanese houses decrease in value, generally quite severely - the conventional wisdom is that after a few decades you might as well just tear it down and build a new one. So there's very real option value you're losing in the Japanese model; if you have to move in a decade or two, you won't be able to get back the equity you put in.

claudeganon 7y ago
A big component of this is that building codes aren’t really enforced for the construction of single-family housing in Japan. Even if you wanted to buy a used home, you run the risk that shoddy construction could put you at serious danger in the event of the country’s not-so-infrequent natural disasters. This is one reason why most people tear down and rebuild.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  So people rebuild houses just in case for a not-so-frequent natural disaster? Or are there other reasons too?
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Yeah there are other reasons, from related insurance concerns to cultural/quasi-spiritual beliefs that old homes acquire the “fortunes” of their previous owners. Also, said lack of building code enforcement, makes new home construction cheaper, faster, and more plentiful. But there are also A LOT of earthquakes, typhoons, and floods in Japan, so it’s not exactly a minor concern either, especially when houses are typically seen as something you buy for life.
    - SapporoChris 7y ago
      On the flip side. I have a friend she is native Japanese, divorced, clerical worker with low income. She got a used house in the suburbs of a small city. (30 minute bus/walk commute) She basically only paid for the price of the land. The house itself is in good shape and the only maintenance issues have been the ones you'd expect from a twenty year old house. Heater replacement, a kitchen vent. I've been inside the house and I see no evidence of shoddy construction. (not that I'm trained to spot it). My point the housing market like it is makes it much less likely for people to become homeless. Japan's homeless numbers reflect this.

gok 7y ago

This article is citing another article from the same source [1] "The typical Tokyo metro area starter home would be an apartment (around 750 square feet) or detached wooden house (around 970 square feet) located in the outer suburbs. According to Zoe Ward of Japan Property Central, the average Tokyo office worker has about a one-hour commute by train each morning." So part of the answer is that homes are tiny by American standards, and it's not actually in Tokyo proper. [1] https://www.curbed.com/2016/6/21/11946606/starter-homes-sweden-france-japan https://www.curbed.com/2016/6/21/11946606/starter-homes-swed...

twblalock 7y ago
A lot of the people with hour-long commutes are not going long distances by American standards. They live in "Tokyo proper" (which is really more of a prefecture than a city) or the neighboring cities.
SECProto 7y ago
Even square footage isn't a perfect metric for cross-national comparison. For example, furniture in Japan (at places like Nitori) is often designed for smaller spaces. When I lived there, a $300 couch fit[1] perfectly in my living room, while it would've looked hilariously undersized in any North American house. I was more comfortable in that apartment, approx 480 sqft, than I was in a 1000 sqft apartment I had in North America [1] たとえば https://www.nitori-net.jp/ec/product/1141031-1140061s/ https://www.nitori-net.jp/ec/product/1141031-1140061s/
- gok 7y ago
  No doubt. American homes don't use floor space very efficiently.

codesuki 7y ago

I think this headline is misleading in 2 ways. 1. yes you might get a house at this price but it's either 1-2 hours out of the city center (which is fine, just saying Tokyo is large.) Or alternatively it's in bad neighborhoods. (bad is relative if you are from the US) 2. your house will most likely look like this: https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. here are listings: https://www.homes.co.jp/smp/kodate/shinchiku/tokyo/list/ https://www.homes.co.jp/smp/kodate/shinchiku/tokyo/list/ there are nice ones in the list. I am just saying that this is the eastern country side of Tokyo (check the map) when the title probably makes everyone think something different.

jseliger 7y ago
Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. This is the sort of thing that markets solve really well. If you want a dwelling unit with those properties, pay for it. If they're less important to you than cost, don't. If one is $300,000 and the other $600,000, it's very reasonable to choose affordability and go to a park.
- harimau777 7y ago
  The problem comes when you cannot afford to pay for it.
  - uoylj 7y ago
    It's almost like people aren't entitled to everything they want in life simply because they exist.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    That really isn't a problem. So long as you can afford something where your basic needs are met: four walls, clean, safe, sturdy, etc, nobody's entitled to waterfront views. The idea is you create value through your work and utilize the proceeds to upgrade your residence, if that's what you value.
    - 7y ago

api 7y ago

"But zoning may be the real winner here. Japan’s zoning laws are national—so no local weirdness hampering construction and driving up prices. The system has 12 zones progressing from residential to commercial and industrial. Any buildings allowed in zone 1 are also allowed in the following zones. Basically: Housing can be built almost anywhere, even on extremely skinny or odd-sized parcels of land. This increases the amount of usable residential space and helps builders continue to meet demand, keeping housing costs under control. " Fighting for something like this here will be one of the fights of the younger generations, otherwise they will be permanently locked out in any city with jobs. (There is plenty of housing where there are no jobs.) Local NIMBY zoning must die. Its basically a cartel: collusion to restrict supply and drive prices artificially high.

mcguire 7y ago

Japan may not be the ideal economic model. In the 1980s, Japan had an enormous economic bubble. (This was the period when MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, was the ultimate Platonic ideal of how to run a country's economy and the Japanese Fifth Generation computing project was going to eliminate "programming" as a job category.) This bubble burst in 1990-1991. It was bad. "GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $4.36 trillion in nominal terms, real wages fell around 5%,... Many Japanese companies replaced a large part of their workforce with temporary workers, who had little job security and fewer benefits. As of 2009, these non-traditional employees made up more than a third of the labor force. For the wider Japanese workforce, wages have stagnated. From their peak in 1997, real wages have since fallen around 13%..[as of 2013]." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) "Japan's annual land prices averaged nationwide have finally risen since the asset bubble collapse, though only mildly at 0.1%, a process that has taken 26 years to show up statistically. [undated] "By 2004, prime "A" property in Tokyo's financial districts had slumped to less than 1 percent of its peak, and Tokyo's residential homes were less than a tenth of their peak,... "The Nikkei 225 at the Tokyo Stock Exchange plunged from a height of 38,915 at the end of December 1989 to 14,309 at the end of August 1992. By 11 March 2003, it plunged to the post-bubble low of 7,862." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble "After a long climb during the decades of Japan’s economic miracle, prices exploded in the late eighties in the frenzy of the bubble economy. Over the following decade, prices collapsed by over 80%, hitting a low in 2002. Since then however, prices have increased and we are not in the middle of a stable period of growth with a positive outlook for the future." https://housingjapan.com/buy/history/ https://housingjapan.com/buy/history/ [I note: "Housing Japan is the leading real estate agent for international clients looking to rent, buy or invest in the Tokyo property market."] "Tokyo’s property market has had its ups and downs. At the peak of the bubble in 1989, some condos were selling for more than 1 billion yen, and buildings with more than 30 floors started springing up. "After the bubble, prices plummeted. In 2002, the price per tsubo was about half that of the bubble era. But easier housing loans and low interest rates helped spur demand for new condos." https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Tokyo-property-prices-near-bubble-era-levels https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Tokyo-prop... [Has a nice graph of Tokyo condo prices, per-tsubo (3.3 sq. meters).]

TomMckenny 7y ago

> The first thing to note is that in Japan, housing isn’t an investment. It’s a place to live. Fixing this can be a major obstacle in countries with inadequate pension systems. In countries where dependency on rising property values is the chief or sole form of retirement planing for vast numbers of people, fixing a broken housing market becomes dependent on fixing the retirement system. And when land values are consistently propped up by government to a greater degree than other investments, it moves people even more into land speculation as their retirement investment because of its artificial safety.

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exabrial 7y ago

You can do the exact same thing in nearly every part of the USA except Blue cities where regulation has moved home ownership out of the poor's reach. For example, California, new construction requires an electric vehicle outlet in garages. If you're poor, you have much better things to be spending $1500 than some charger outlet they will literally _never use_. Instead, regulations on how people want to live their lives and shelter themselves cement a cycle of poverty into these areas.

defterGoose 7y ago
Extreme political bias aside, you need to check your facts. This article from 2014 estimates the cost for the required 40/80A breaker/conduit at a whopping $50. This is in contrast to the higher cost of adding such capability later. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095076_ca-to-require-new-buildings-to-be-wired-for-electric-car-charging-stations https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095076_ca-to-require-n...
maxsilver 7y ago
An EV charger only costs about $400. Add $100 or so, if you don't already have a 240v line there pre-construction. This seems like a totally fair thing for regulation to require, considering the majority of Californian homes are going to be hanging around for 40+ years or more.

soared 7y ago

The cultural differences make this comparison less meaningful than you’d expect. In Japan you absolutely never have friends over to your house or apartment. Everyone meets at bars or restaurants. Similar to nyc, many apartments in Tokyo are a few hundred square feet and literally only serve as a place to sleep and shower. That means houses aren’t such a major thing and so the Japanese invest way less time and energy (and place less importance on) their homes. My parents lived in japan and I have a few friends there. I spoke with a friend who works in graphic design on the outskirts of Tokyo who doesn’t even own a fridge - all his meals are eaten outside of his home.

lonelappde 7y ago
The article has almost no content, but one of the three facts it provides is that Tokyo has 3-bedroom houses on offer for anyone who wants one, for $300K and 1% annual interest. It's not about 300sqft apartments.
dionidium 7y ago
> The cultural differences make this comparison less meaningful than you’d expect If these cultural differences are so strong, then surely a market that allows new construction in the U.S. will tend toward creating housing that meets those needs. If it doesn't, it's probably because people place more value on other things (e.g. proximity, price, etc). The fact is that the market doesn't even get a chance to work itself out in the U.S. because cities encode a particular set of living preferences in law.
lolcopterpilot 7y ago
> absolutely never have friends over to your house or apartment Absolute statements like that are just clearly not true. I've been to Japanese friends' apartments, even visited friends' family barbecue or wine tasting night. Less common doesn't mean it never happens.
- jbay808 7y ago
  I agree. When I lived in Japan, I was invited to (local) friends' places often, including for a couple of kotatsu sleepover parties. It was probably more frequent than being invited to a friend's place in Vancouver. Probably because most of my friends in Vancouver live in sharehouses or basement suites where they aren't allowed to have guests by their landlord, while my friends in Japan had small but respectable spaces that they had much more permissive ownership of.

bane 7y ago

Decent family houses in Tokyo are definitely more expensive than this, but not hugely (also Kyoto surprisingly). There's some interesting things about the Japanese housing market, for example, many homes become "worthless" after the end of the mortgage -- so they depreciate and are more like buying cars. Tokyo is also an absolutely enormous city with even more massive metro area. There's very few examples on the planet that come close. Tokyo is sometimes called "the infinite city" for good reason. This means that yes, you can pay huge money for a coffin in some areas, and little money for an entire house elsewhere in the same city. New York is kind of the same way in that respect, but is actually still smaller and less diverse. I could write a ton more, but I think this series from "Life Where I'm From" which is pointed out in the article is a fantastic overview of housing for a nuclear family in Tokyo. How an Average Family in Tokyo Can Buy a New Home - https://youtu.be/iGbC5j4pG9w https://youtu.be/iGbC5j4pG9w Brand New Japanese House Tour - https://youtu.be/Jv6SbFlZMbU https://youtu.be/Jv6SbFlZMbU Are Japanese Homes Really Worthless After 30 Years? - https://youtu.be/1SiPGP_BDS4 https://youtu.be/1SiPGP_BDS4 Old Japanese Apartment vs. New House - https://youtu.be/SI3_PJoAa04 https://youtu.be/SI3_PJoAa04 What a Very Old Japanese House is Like - https://youtu.be/r8zECc4JM1Y https://youtu.be/r8zECc4JM1Y Living in Traditional Japanese Townhouses: Kyo-machiya - https://youtu.be/NljSnaZ2WiY https://youtu.be/NljSnaZ2WiY Checking Out New Japanese House Design and Technology - https://youtu.be/5AiLSyNhEXg https://youtu.be/5AiLSyNhEXg I'd also point out this young couple who are expecting their first child (Paolo from Tokyo) What a Japanese Moving Company in Tokyo is like - https://youtu.be/q0RX59G2jaA https://youtu.be/q0RX59G2jaA $1500 Japanese Apartment Tour in Tokyo Shibuya - https://youtu.be/Qtc_zrpRIs8 https://youtu.be/Qtc_zrpRIs8 Average Daily Living Cost in Tokyo Japan - https://youtu.be/xrgrBJc-64c https://youtu.be/xrgrBJc-64c

jbarham 7y ago

For anyone interested in Japanese house architecture, the book Jutaku, published by Phaidon, is fantastic: https://au.phaidon.com/store/architecture/jutaku-japanese-houses-9780714869629/ https://au.phaidon.com/store/architecture/jutaku-japanese-ho...

lolcopterpilot 7y ago

An average family in Tokyo does not live in a detached house so the whole argument is false. About 27% of the units are detached houses and the ratio is decreasing a bit. Plus Tokyo is almost 100km wide. That's a huge area and of course there are places where housing is dirt cheap because people are fleeing away.

nikkwong 7y ago

As someone who's invested pretty heavily in real estate over the last few years (Seattle) I sometimes ponder if we are all eventually destined to a fate similar to that of Japan's. It seems to me that the US is only a superpower because we were geographically fortunate to not share contiguous borders with Europe post WWII and we've taken that for granted. Policy makers in the US don't have a long enough horizon to adequately plan for the future; and birthrates are projected to fall—it's hard to say how much, but, eventually, even below replacement rates (?). As of late I have started to question the long-term prospect of indefinite economic growth, and what the implications of challenging the status-quo here are. I would be interested as to what people's perspectives are around the likelihood of advanced nations inevitably sharing a fate similar to Japan's.

turtlebits 7y ago

I think the more interesting point is the interest rate. 1% @ 35 years is exceptionally low. In the US, say at a 3.5% and 30 year loan, your monthly payment would be closer to $1,350. Add property taxes and insurance, and you are probably closer to $1,500.