4 ms·
Well, one thing to keep in mind while reading this is that in Japan, house turnover is unusually high. In the sense that often (or at least much more than in U
by supernova87a 6y ago
Well, one thing to keep in mind while reading this is that in Japan, house turnover is unusually high. In the sense that often (or at least much more than in US), a family will tear down and construct a new home when buying a property.
So in such an environment, innovative / different construction techniques are much more testable and able to be experimented with. And when the costs are being compared against full build, the cost of an even expensive prefab unit is not so bad.
- emodendroket 6y agoAlso, high estate taxes mean that usually a house is sold off when the owner dies and whatever stood there is torn down.
- eric-hu 6y agoCould you explain how the estate taxes drive that? I’m not quite following the connection.
- edrxty 6y agoI think the implication is that if estate taxes are high, then when someone dies their estate is calculated as hard assets + cash and they have to split that somehow to pay the tax. If taxes were 25% and the house was worth 200k and the deceased had 20k in cash, you'd end up paying 55k in taxes but only have 20k in cash to pay it with unless the descendants used their own funds. As such, it's easier to sell the house, take the 220k and pay the taxes.
- emodendroket 6y agoThat's how I understand it. Often a single-family home gets replaced with multi-unit housing.
- edrxty 6y agoWhat's the cause of this tendency?
- chrisjharris 6y agoMassive generalization with numerous exceptions, but an ingrained belief that new is better than old, and first-hand better than used.
- ElFitz 6y agoAlso, although still a generalization, quite a different attachment to things, especially buildings, partly due to the routine exposure to natural catastrophes. I mean, sure people are attached to old buildings and monuments, but even those can be rebuilt more or less often.
- supernova87a 6y agoI don't known if this is related or a reflection of a similar cultural thinking, but there is the important Ise Jingu shrine that gets torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, even though it is conceptually like 1500 years old.
- Tor3 6y ago20 years between rebuilds is just enough to transfer the knowledge and the craft to the next generation - and the craft is what they want to keep. I wrote a bit more about that in another post.
- supernova87a 6y agoYes I find that really interesting! It's one of those things (like pieces of code) where: A) You should build often enough that the institutional knowledge and practice can be handed down effectively between generations or B) Not build until it breaks and the people doing it have to rediscover and properly design it again from scratch. It's the dangerous middle ground where people need to modify/rebuild something in the meantime, but lost the practice and knowledge about how to do it properly!
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoI've heard japanese housing is a depreciating asset due to cultural and tax regulation in Japan, as opposed to the US. So there would be greater economic demand to rebuild/churn the housing stock.
- bluGill 6y agoThat is common in the US for mansions. You buy the lot for the view and put the house you want on it. Sometimes you remodel the existing house, but that is only if needed to work around some sort of legal issue - the remodel is leave one wall standing, and when done a second remodel to replace that one wall. For most people the cost of the building is enough that if it is functional you would want to use it.