20 ms·

Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think

283 points by konichi-value 4y ago

konichi-value 4y ago
This is a follow up article to a lot of questions on this thread: How Tokyo Avoided the Affordable Housing Crisis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963
rippercushions 4y ago
The article makes a major mistake: it uses Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo-to, basically "Tokyo State", area 2,194.07 km2) for comparisons, not central Tokyo (23-ku, aka the former Tokyo City, area 619 km2). So it's basically the same as saying houses in New York are much larger than those in Paris, because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. > Even more striking is that more people in Tokyo live in detached houses compared to apartments (30%) than in New York (16.3%) and Paris (12.3%). I'm pretty sure this "striking" fact is an artifact of including a whole lotta suburbs, exurbs and farms in the Tokyo stats. Very few people live in detached houses within the 23-ku. TL;DR: Housing in greater Tokyo is indeed affordable, but as anyone who's seen a "one-room mansion" (read: tiny studio) can attest, it's rarely spacious.
- diziet 4y ago
  Okutama, Tokyo is part of "Tokyo Metropolis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okutama,_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okutama,_Tokyo . The furthest I've been is Hachioji, which was about 1 hour by train from 23-ku. Hachioji is roughly half as far as Okutama. In New York City terms, getting to Hicksville, NY takes about 1 hour by train. For Bay Area folks, both Dublin / Pleasanton and Bay Point / Pittsburg ... or even Antioch are about an hour away by BART.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Is 1 hour by train a reasonable metric to use given the differences in trains
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      yes, because we are measuring how satisfied the people will be with their living arrangements not how fast the trains are. As a person I don't care if the train is fast or slow I care how long it takes me to get home - if it takes me 1 hour to get home with a slow train or 1 hour with a fast train it is the same to me - I live 1 hour from work.
      - quickthrower2 4y ago
        Almost. Take reliability of trains into account too. If you are physically closer you have backup options (buses, other trains, bicycle perhaps!). Sydney has such slow transport that if you need to make connections it can be quicker to cycle the same distance. The UK people live not just in suburbs but entirely different cities to commute to London, but using trains that if they go wrong - and they will - it’ll be long and/or expensive commute that day.
        skhr0680 4y ago
        > Take reliability of trains into account too. I think it's fair to say that Japan is the country in the world with the most reliable trains
        lillecarl 4y ago
        Switzerland, but Japan is up there indeed!
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  - franciscop 4y ago
    Not fair comparison, Okutama is literally in the middle of a mountain range with no much around, but you can get there combining a bunch of express trains in a very straightforward combination, which seems pretty hand-picked. Hicksville to NYC is 56km by car. Okutama from Tokyo Station is 96km.
    - diziet 4y ago
      I actually compared train-to-train distance to Hachioji, not Okutama.
- bluepizza 4y ago
  Aren’t the backstreets of the less central ku filled with houses? I mean Setagaya, Ota, Edogawa, Adachi, Suginami, etc. I used to pick stations at random to arrive at and explore, and what I always saw was endless houses. Only the areas closer to bigger stations had manshon. I think you might be conflating Shibuya/Roppongi/Shinjuku with less central parts of the 23 special wards.
  - skhr0680 4y ago
    even in Shinjuku there are cheap houses if you look. My friend rents an old house with renovated interior in Shimoochiai for what I thought was surprisingly cheap
  - wst_ 4y ago
    Those are huge wards by themselves. There are plenty of busy as well as residential places. For example, Setagaya-ku - stations like Sangenjaya, Jiyugaoka or Futakotamagawa are far cry from the quiet residential areas. There's a lot of any kind of housing there - bigger, smaller, houses and mansions alike.
- lhl 4y ago
  Agreed, this article is basing it's numbers off of this (linked) study: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/airdrive-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/20200804092413/GLA-Housing-Research-Note-3-Housing-in-four-world-cities.pdf https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/airdrive-images/wp-conten... If you view page 6 and 7, you'll see why these numbers are largely irrelevant since the boundaries for all the "cities" except NYC (which is the 5 boroughs) include the large swathes of suburbs/exurbs around the city. A study looking at 23-wards vs Inner London vs City of Paris would be a lot more informative. BTW, the writer of the article seems to simply be using these numbers to push his view that real estate prices will continue to go up in Tokyo. Housing Japan, a Japanese real estate agency that caters to foreign investors shows pricing for apartments in the 23 wards have been on a pretty crazy upwards trajectory [1], but 1) this is denominated in JPY pricing, and the exchange rate has tanked by 35% vs USD this past year, and of course, I'd be much more interested in seeing that post revisited in 2023... [1] https://housingjapan.com/blog/tokyo-residential-real-estate-sees-strong-demand/ https://housingjapan.com/blog/tokyo-residential-real-estate-...
  - nostrebored 4y ago
    JPY is poised for an astronomical fall. The government cannot both keep servicing debt and buoying the currency . Those houses will appreciate in value JPY denominated and crater in terms of USD.
    - CapricornNoble 4y ago
      So....living in Japan with a USD income we should actually wait longer to pull the trigger on buying real estate? I was already sizing up properties across the country, putting together a plan for my family to buy properties for rental income because they are already cheap...
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    New York "metro" is always tricky. All of New Jersey, southern Connecticut, Staten Island, the Bronx, outer Brooklyn, outer Queens: Who the hell cares. Yes, I will be down-voted for this comment! My point: Defining inner city NYC that is wealthy requires some care and consideration. All the interesting "real estate action" happens in a very small radius from midtown Manhattan.
- marak830 4y ago
  And the apartment as a comparison to houses doesn't help much, as Japanese houses tend to be smaller than western. Source is me, I've been living in Japan for over 10 years now.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Western being what exactly? Houses are rarely spacious in a lot of what qualifies as 'west'. You can't compare The Netherlands and Belgium with Germany, let alone the US.
    - marak830 4y ago
      Sorry I should have specified, I was referring to Aussie homes(my home country) or US. My bad. But even then I'd probably guess Japanese are smaller. I have not looked at the numbers and will go look now though, I should have before commenting. Edit: you're right(as I had assumed being familiar), Netherlands average from a quick search is roughly on par.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. But isn't the entire Tokyo Metropolis under an hour by mass transit? That's a far cry from Buffalo. Like, Buffalo cannot commute to NYC by anything other than private aircraft.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    If you replace "Buffalo" with "an hour out of NYC" his point still stands.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      Except that housing an hour out of NYC seems to be more expensive than the housing the article talks about.
      - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
        I don't know - an hour out of Penn Station takes you as far as places like Wyandanch on Long Island with the LIRR, or Stamford, CT with the MNR.
        HWR_14 4y ago
        I specifically looked at Stamford when I wrote that. Tokyo is in the 350-600sq ft range by the article. You can currently get a fairly spartan 600 sq ft in Stamford for the price listed (one vacancy). That's more than the average the article cites, but in the same range. After all, you'd have to compare the outskirts of Stamford with the outsirkts of Tokyo.
        saalweachter 4y ago
        Well, yeah, if you take the commuter rail line along the densely populated coastline. If you take the Harlem Line up to the middle of nowhere, you can get to Katonah in an hour on the express trains during peak hours.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Japan also has a declining population, extremely low immigration, and minimal foreign housing purchases. These are the opposite factors of what urban US is facing. Even Tokyo metro area population has been in decline and is forecast to decline, as NYCs continues growing. Tokyo housing-space-per-resident being higher is probably also an artifact of lower household formation / childrearing than western cities. That said Tokyo has different zoning which allows for smaller apartment units than NYC/SF/etc and should be applauded for that.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  I don't have numbers, but I doubt that 12.3% of people living in Paris proper (the 20 arrondissements) live in detached houses. Yes, there are villas in the city, but they're extremely rare. I don't see them housing more than 1 in 10 people. So their numbers seem indeed dubious. Edit: I found official stats (French only): https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2011101?geo=DEP-75#chiffre-cle-3 https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2011101?geo=DEP-75#chif... Table "LOG T2". "maisons" = "house", "appartements" = "apartments" In 2019, less than 1% of housing stock were "houses".
- allturtles 4y ago
  Your point that we have to be careful about the basis of comparison is well-taken, but your analogy is not sound. New York state is 141,000 km2, it's over 1/3 the size of all of Japan.
- citrusybread 4y ago
  > it uses Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo-to, basically "Tokyo State", area 2,194.07 km2) for comparisons, not central Tokyo (23-ku, aka the former Tokyo City, area 619 km2). So it's basically the same as saying houses in New York are much larger than those in Paris, because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. As others have said, difference between NYC and NYS is much much larger than that... But for reference, Ottawa, Canada, is one of the largest cities in Canada by area at 2778 km^2. But the Greater Toronto Area, what many call "Toronto", is ~7000km^2 and only has ~6 million people... Toronto proper is only 630km^2, with 3 million people. The scale here is reasonable, Tokyo has excellent transportation options that make it realistic to live anywhere in that region.
InfiniteRand 4y ago
Better than New York, Paris and London is a low bar
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  It is a big modern industrious city, what should it be compared to?
rgmerk 4y ago
Paris, London and New York - the key points of comparison - aren’t exactly known for their spacious housing. One other point that many of the Tokyo fans don’t acknowledge is how extraordinarily ugly the place is. Sure, it’s clean (more than you can say for New York) but clearly nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside. And I’ve never seen more miserable public parks in a developed country.
- franciscop 4y ago
  I have to agree and disagree :) First, it's not clean, it's just different way of unclean and only during certain periods of the day. But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows. On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner. "Nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside" => completely agree, my pet peeve here is that one of the best towns geographically speaking of Japan is probably the ugliest town I've seen in my life in a 1st world country (Kawaguchiko, with the beautiful lake, lush forest and Fuji San nearby). "never seen more miserable public parks" again have to agree, the median local park is taken out of a horror movie. Though there are* a bunch of very, very beautiful ones!
  - bluepizza 4y ago
    > But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows. Apart from the worst parts of Roppongi on a Monday morning, I have never ever seen this.
    - franciscop 4y ago
      Trash days 5~8am, normal days in any place with many restaurants 11pm~8am basically (Shibuya, Ebisu, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, etc).
      - 4y ago
eps 4y ago
Offtopic, but > the tallest building in Tokyo is only 255 meters There is a hotel in this tower (called Andaz) and it has a proper swimming pool on the 37th floor. Quite an jaw-dropping experience on its own, but doubly so during an earthquake.
- bluepizza 4y ago
  You barely feel it during an earthquake, because the building has multiple stabilising mechanisms.
  - eps 4y ago
    Yep, but you do feel it, because something is... off.
    - bluepizza 4y ago
      Ah, yes, It’s super freaky. I worked from a hotel room at the Yokohama Landmark Tower for a month, and I had some freak outs. Your balance feels off, even if you don’t feel the shakes.
- belter 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/lJ8cv4t2tT8 https://youtu.be/lJ8cv4t2tT8
davidkuennen 4y ago
As someone being in Tokyo right now chatting with locals about this topic it's just not generally true or comparable to other cities. Sure there are parts of Tokyo that are cheaper, but Tokyo is gigantic. All the places that "matter" with reasonably fast commute are very expensive and small.
- marak830 4y ago
  I live in fujisawa, takes me about 30 minutes to get to Yokohama which is pretty damn major. House prices here are quite reasonable, nice distance to the ocean for the weekends. I'm considering buying and building a house in the next year or two.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  > locals about this topic Are the locals foreigners or Japanese? The set of housing options are different between the two. There's an implicit price premium and threshold on the units with landlords receptive to foreigners. The cheaper accommodations are not going to be available especially if tenant isn't fluent in the language. > All the places that "matter" with reasonably fast commute are very expensive and small. I live 3 minutes commute to Shibuya, and my rent is half my rent in an outer borough of NYC. Brand new lofty unit designed by a famous architect. Space efficiency-wise, it's equal if not greater. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison to just look at floorspace, since Japan has lots of infrastructure such as actually convenient stores which means people don't need to own as much household items.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    How much do you have to pay in monthly housing costs with the inclusion of utilities and amenities?
  - TedShiller 4y ago
    Then why doesn't everyone just live in Tokyo? You just got your answer.
franciscop 4y ago
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-the-average-household-have-in-japan/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-much-living-sp... [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.
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  It is the price one has to pay for living in the city and being fashionable. I see this in Amsterdam: rich expats who barely grasp that there is a country outside the city.
- cannam 4y ago
  I don't know about NY or Paris, but the comparison against London seems fair enough. They seem to be using a Tokyo metropolitan area of about 2000 km^2, and comparing it with Greater London at 1572 km^2. And indeed, people throughout Greater London are entirely used to living in small, damp, shared boxes.
  - franciscop 4y ago
    The geography of the "cities" is very different though (look at the density of population maps provided), where "Tokyo Metropolitan" is one third pure mountains, then one third low-density living (think L.A.) and then one third what people normally thinks of the city of Tokyo, all of these in a sausage-like shape, while "Greater London" grows in a circle and so it's a circle-ish area. See this image with the labels, we should compare the green one instead of the 3 of them. Ideally "Tokyo" would be something more like the purple one, but the purple one is nothing. So we have "23 wards" (green), or Tokyo Metropolitan (the 3 together), neither of which is the best comparison, but def the green one vs London is much better than all of them (the purple dashes are how I think London would look like approx): https://imgur.com/a/nCmkE80 https://imgur.com/a/nCmkE80
tjpnz 4y ago
I'm looking at buying next year. Unlike where I'm from (New Zealand) property in Tokyo is better quality (although that's not really difficult) and dare I say cheaper.
- Jach 4y ago
  I've also heard it's rather easier for a foreigner to buy than to find a willing landlord...
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    That's a stretch and it is hard to get a home loan in your first years. It is true that when searching for a rental you will probably come across landlords that don't rent to foreigners, and more that won't rent to Chinese people. Many landlords also expect you to speak at least some Japanese. That being said, it's competitive only for average sized/priced places. Both low end and above-average properties are easier to rent.
    - smcl 4y ago
      Just out of curiosity - is it largely just "I only speak Japanese and don't know how I'd deal with a foreigner" thing or do those kinds of landlords tend to think negatively of the foreigners? As an immigrant I know it can be a bit fiddly to resolve some things when there's a language barrier, but as long as both sides are patient and willing to try things can go relatively smoothly
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - tjpnz 4y ago
        In my own experience it's very much about the language barrier. I was able to smooth over many issues getting into my current place by mentioning my wife was Japanese.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
fareesh 4y ago
Older cities have a lot of legacy issues that manifest in multiple ways. Housing is one of them. Solving the problem is hard since the cities can't be re-planned and rebuilt.
thiago_fm 4y ago
The graph with many countries is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. It says with $1500 rent you can get a 140m2 or 1500 sqft apartment in Berlin. HAHA! MAYBE IN THE 90s. Not to mention that I'm willing to bet that less of 5% of housing in Berlin is 140m2 or higher. (might be 1% or less even)
- nikanj 4y ago
  These often use average rents paid today. They tend to be much lower than average rents if you rent a home today. One of the main reasons why older people seem to think millennials are complaining about nothing: they locked in their rental rates back in the last millennia, and the laws generally only allow low-single-digit increases per year
newaccount74 4y ago
I think measuring per person is pretty misleading. A single person living in a 25m^2 appartment would be quite cramped. A family with two young kids living in 100m^2 is pretty spacious. So if you look at living space per person, then societies with smaller household sizes will appear to have more living space per person. so if you measure that, you also have to compare how many people are in households as well.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, a more accurate measurement would be "baseline + X" - you don't really need to go above the average household size, but you can fit people in way denser than 25m^2 (270 sq ft) if they share common areas. The average dorm room is 230 sq ft (with a roommate!) but the dorm provides common areas and other amenities. Another thing to consider when comparing countries is what is considered "living space" and what is not - some areas have large porches that are not considered "living space" even though they serve similar functions to what a living room might in other parts of the world.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    It depends on how you measure those 25m^2; I lived in a studio in Copenhagen for a while and my 25m^2 included the common areas / roof garden etc. Private space was around 16-20m^2, and I am being generous here.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yeah, so many things go into it that it's hard to just compare numbers, you really have to live it to compare.
- JTBooth 4y ago
  Agree - I moved from 40m2 alone to 60m2 with my wife, and the experience is much better. We still have one sink, one toilet, one bathtub, one washing machine. Her space takes up maybe 10m2. The free walking-around space probably went from 5m2 to 25m2.
- 4y ago
yrgulation 4y ago
I dont know how accurate this report is, but i do wish western europe was as well organised and clean as japan. Many, if not all, west european capitals are a mess with poor living conditions with no signs of improvement.
- athenot 4y ago
  Purely as a visitor, Zürich definitely felt cleaner and better organized than other cities in western Europe.
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    An outlier indeed. Still feels a bit boring, but it ticks all the marks in my initial comment. I think europe strayed far from its path. We should look at japan and east asia (singapore, south korea) and reflect on why they look so much more advanced and well maintained compared to our countries.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    I think Switzerland in general is exceptional and not at all representative of the rest of western Europe.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I spent a month in Tokyo in 29 Square meters it was painfully small, and expensive. It was the best I could find. These numbers are deeply suspicious.
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  The standard rental contract in Japan is not 1-year, but 2-years. For these engagements, as with employment, it's about consistency, predictability and long-term commitment. One-month is ultra-short by Japanese standards. The rental inventory is distinct from regular apartments. This is effectively a hotel.
  - amrocha 4y ago
    Kinda, it's 2 years but you can usually leave anytime after 6 months with no fee. After 2 years you need to sign a new contract, which means new fees etc
assbuttbuttass 4y ago
When did paying 30% of your paycheck in rent become "very affordable?"
- coryrc 4y ago
  What else do you need to spend lots of money on?
  - rfreytag 4y ago
    In the US you might need to plan for health care expenses and higher-education.
- Aleksdev 4y ago
  30% of your paycheck seems to be the general rule for housing. At least in the states.
andy_ppp 4y ago
Every time these articles come up I think about what a shafting people in Japan are taking on property and why western media want to write articles lying about it to the public. Japanese property is tiny by any metric compared to western property; maybe there are some rich people who would like to remove housing regulations and make more money selling crap tiny plastic homes to people at absurd valuations…
dontbenebby 4y ago
Maybe it's only cheap due to the barriers to immigration? I've only been to Japan once, but I noticed how they're very formal compared to the various EU countries. I keep meeting people who move to Appalachia and not register that the things that made it attractive (low crime etc) won't stay that way if people keep talking to me like I'm literally retarded. (Every time someone tells me "I work in technology or whatever as I walk to get my espresso, I want to say "Great! Enjoy locking down your house like my South African neighbor told me they had to during apartheid, I've had too many of these conversations where the person was speaking in bad faith.")
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  > Maybe it's only cheap due to the barriers to immigration? Permanent Residency is helpful towards procuring a mortgage, but you don't need a visa to buy property in Japan. Non-resident cash buyers had no problem pushing up the real estate market in Vancouver, Canada.
yboris 4y ago
I paid $1,500 for furnished 2 bedroom: Can confirm. Three years ago I spent 2 months in a furnished two bedroom apartment two stops away from Shinjuku - paid $1,500 / month. Had three different subway stations within ~7 min walk each. Great location, very inexpensive. The company I used is Fontana - English speaking, they set up gas/electric/water and all I had to do was pay for them at the convenience store nearby (7 Eleven). The only requirement is a 2-month minimum stay. Will do again.
dcolkitt 4y ago
Should also be noted that Tokyo is one of the few major metropolises in the world where the price of housing has not meaningfully increased in real terms since 2000[1]. The Japanese constitution drastically limits zoning, building and land use restrictions. As a result the city of Tokyo builds more new housing than all of California or England.[2] (And no, this isn't because of Japan's demographics. While Japan as a whole is stagnating, the population of Tokyo is still increasing as fast as London, New York or the Bay Area because of high rural to urban migration.) Tokyo is very much proof that NIMBY reforms are the solution to the housing crisis in the West. Deregulating the ability of property developers to build new housing will incontrevirtibly increase supply, blunt runaway housing costs, and make dense cities with high economic opportunity affordable for the middle class. [1]https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-... [2]https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-housing-better-case-1-japan/ https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-...
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Even though everyone wants to live in Tokyo, the same is true for hit real estate markets in other countries that it is being compared to. We aren’t comparing Tokyo to Duluth. Lack of building codes like must have central heat or must have bathroom also can bring housing prices down.
  - Danieru 4y ago
    Tokyo's building codes do require bathrooms. Plus minimum sunshine for a room to count as a bedroom, along with shutters on all windows. What caught my eye about your comment is central heating. Japan in fact penalizes central heating. Not just not requiring it but going so far as to increase property taxes slightly. In Japan's case it is a desire to reduce energy intensity in a country dependent on energy imports.
    - throwaway2037 4y ago
      You wrote: <<Japan in fact penalizes central heating>> I belive it. Japan housing is so inefficient for a wealthly / highly industriaslied country: It is bizarre! I tried to Google about this topic, but I did not find anything. Can you provide a hint about your source?
dark-star 4y ago
if you can't even tell where Tokyo and Osaka are on your maps, you probably shouldn't publish articles about Japan. Who knows what other numbers or diagrams are wrong there...
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2323:_Modeling_Study https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2323:_Modeling_St...
logicalmonster 4y ago
Outside of either aggressive capitalist desire to continuously lower wages or some groups wanting to destroy Japanese culture, I've never understood why there was such an extreme panic by some about Japan's lower birth rates to the point that they urged mass immigration there. A stabilizing population on an island with limited space seems like a good thing. A little more space opens up for living and real-estate prices might become more favorable. Maybe there's room for more parks and other things that make life good. When conditions become more favorable, people will be able to reproduce more. We see in the animal kingdom the predator-prey cycle that population takes care of itself. When there's too many rabbits or deer, there's no cause for concern: the plentiful food supply means that wolves and foxes will be able to reproduce more and take care of the situation. When there's too many wolves/foxes and the situation reverses, the scarce food supply means that the predators aren't able to flourish and the rabbits and deer are able to reproduce more. I'd say that the human desire for reproduction might work in the same way, only instead of prey, maybe real-estate prices and quality of life is the cyclical variable to note.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  GDP can’t go up without strong reproduction and/or immigration. The economy stagnates and government debt becomes massive, which is what you see with Japan. The scary thing is that this is something the USA and lots of other countries are headed towards as well. https://dailyinfographic.com/government-debt-by-country https://dailyinfographic.com/government-debt-by-country
  - mrep 4y ago
    GDP can grow with a stable population if your Real gross domestic product per capita is growing which it has been for the USA [0]. Japans has barely grown for the past 30 years which is their big problem [1]. [0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDJPN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDJPN
    - 4y ago
AtreidesTyrant 4y ago
I would love to stay there, but keeping western hours for your job would be very difficult. Not to mention the dislike of foreigners
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The hours depends on your job, and the "dislike of foreigners" is mostly a myth. Tons of foreigners live here and love it.
mistrial9 4y ago
there is a maps-and-data company in Berkeley, California (urban planners) that maintains detailed and mostly-current information on occupancy for all of California; both renters and homes; unending policy battles behind-the-scenes about covid-19 and eviction very much at the fore. (trivia it is in the same physical building as the old After Dark screensaver company, so long ago)
twobitshifter 4y ago
These statistics would be much more useful if the median had been used for prices and floor areas. These are both long tailed distributions, so the average is skewed. I would wager many of the “unexpected” results are due to this effect.
dahfizz 4y ago
32 square meters per person? That's 344 square feet. It's amazing to me people would choose to live in such a tiny space.
- nikanj 4y ago
  To be fair, in the US people live in a cardboard box on the street
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  That’s slightly larger that my very expensive apartment in Paris proper. I moved there from a bigger place when I broke up years ago and I’m surprised by how liveable it is. It’s not big but it’s mostly fine. For the time I spent there it seems like a good deal. Working from home was annoying when it was mandatory however.
m3at 4y ago
A peculiarity of renting in Japan (not mentioned in the article): you often need to advance a substantial amount of money upon starting a lease. It varies but a rule of thumb is about 5 months of rent. Part of it is advanced rent, but some is non-recoverable (key money, brokerage fee, insurance, cleaning fee...). Contracts are often two years, and at the end of it you typically have a renewal fee as well, at around a month of rent.
rubslopes 4y ago
Why these people think I will subscribe to their mailing list before I even read the third sentence?
GolDDranks 4y ago
For a data point: (admittedly, barely) inside Tokyo 23 wards, 15 min walk to nearest station, 70 sqm (753 sqft) 3LDK (3 bedrooms and a living-dining-kitchen). 140000 jpy / month. (945 usd at the current rate.) I think it's a reasonable deal. Less or similar than I would pay for a similar flat in my native Helsinki, Finland.
didip 4y ago
Ever since experiencing sticker shock in Silicon Valley housing 7 years ago. Housing in Tokyo or Seoul no longer looked expensive in my eyes.
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: How Tokyo avoided the affordable housing crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963 - Sept 2022 (90 comments)
TedShiller 4y ago
People who think denser housing lowers rents haven't been to a big city. Someone always mentions "But Tokyo...". That person never lives in Tokyo.
tagami 4y ago
Tokyo and Osaka are reversed on the map

283 points by konichi-value 4y ago

This is a follow up article to a lot of questions on this thread: How Tokyo Avoided the Affordable Housing Crisis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963

rippercushions 4y ago

The article makes a major mistake: it uses Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo-to, basically "Tokyo State", area 2,194.07 km2) for comparisons, not central Tokyo (23-ku, aka the former Tokyo City, area 619 km2). So it's basically the same as saying houses in New York are much larger than those in Paris, because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. > Even more striking is that more people in Tokyo live in detached houses compared to apartments (30%) than in New York (16.3%) and Paris (12.3%). I'm pretty sure this "striking" fact is an artifact of including a whole lotta suburbs, exurbs and farms in the Tokyo stats. Very few people live in detached houses within the 23-ku. TL;DR: Housing in greater Tokyo is indeed affordable, but as anyone who's seen a "one-room mansion" (read: tiny studio) can attest, it's rarely spacious.

diziet 4y ago
Okutama, Tokyo is part of "Tokyo Metropolis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okutama,_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okutama,_Tokyo . The furthest I've been is Hachioji, which was about 1 hour by train from 23-ku. Hachioji is roughly half as far as Okutama. In New York City terms, getting to Hicksville, NY takes about 1 hour by train. For Bay Area folks, both Dublin / Pleasanton and Bay Point / Pittsburg ... or even Antioch are about an hour away by BART.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Is 1 hour by train a reasonable metric to use given the differences in trains
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    yes, because we are measuring how satisfied the people will be with their living arrangements not how fast the trains are. As a person I don't care if the train is fast or slow I care how long it takes me to get home - if it takes me 1 hour to get home with a slow train or 1 hour with a fast train it is the same to me - I live 1 hour from work.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Almost. Take reliability of trains into account too. If you are physically closer you have backup options (buses, other trains, bicycle perhaps!). Sydney has such slow transport that if you need to make connections it can be quicker to cycle the same distance. The UK people live not just in suburbs but entirely different cities to commute to London, but using trains that if they go wrong - and they will - it’ll be long and/or expensive commute that day.
      - skhr0680 4y ago
        > Take reliability of trains into account too. I think it's fair to say that Japan is the country in the world with the most reliable trains
        lillecarl 4y ago
        Switzerland, but Japan is up there indeed!
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
- franciscop 4y ago
  Not fair comparison, Okutama is literally in the middle of a mountain range with no much around, but you can get there combining a bunch of express trains in a very straightforward combination, which seems pretty hand-picked. Hicksville to NYC is 56km by car. Okutama from Tokyo Station is 96km.
  - diziet 4y ago
    I actually compared train-to-train distance to Hachioji, not Okutama.
bluepizza 4y ago
Aren’t the backstreets of the less central ku filled with houses? I mean Setagaya, Ota, Edogawa, Adachi, Suginami, etc. I used to pick stations at random to arrive at and explore, and what I always saw was endless houses. Only the areas closer to bigger stations had manshon. I think you might be conflating Shibuya/Roppongi/Shinjuku with less central parts of the 23 special wards.
- skhr0680 4y ago
  even in Shinjuku there are cheap houses if you look. My friend rents an old house with renovated interior in Shimoochiai for what I thought was surprisingly cheap
- wst_ 4y ago
  Those are huge wards by themselves. There are plenty of busy as well as residential places. For example, Setagaya-ku - stations like Sangenjaya, Jiyugaoka or Futakotamagawa are far cry from the quiet residential areas. There's a lot of any kind of housing there - bigger, smaller, houses and mansions alike.
lhl 4y ago
Agreed, this article is basing it's numbers off of this (linked) study: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/airdrive-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/20200804092413/GLA-Housing-Research-Note-3-Housing-in-four-world-cities.pdf https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/airdrive-images/wp-conten... If you view page 6 and 7, you'll see why these numbers are largely irrelevant since the boundaries for all the "cities" except NYC (which is the 5 boroughs) include the large swathes of suburbs/exurbs around the city. A study looking at 23-wards vs Inner London vs City of Paris would be a lot more informative. BTW, the writer of the article seems to simply be using these numbers to push his view that real estate prices will continue to go up in Tokyo. Housing Japan, a Japanese real estate agency that caters to foreign investors shows pricing for apartments in the 23 wards have been on a pretty crazy upwards trajectory [1], but 1) this is denominated in JPY pricing, and the exchange rate has tanked by 35% vs USD this past year, and of course, I'd be much more interested in seeing that post revisited in 2023... [1] https://housingjapan.com/blog/tokyo-residential-real-estate-sees-strong-demand/ https://housingjapan.com/blog/tokyo-residential-real-estate-...
- nostrebored 4y ago
  JPY is poised for an astronomical fall. The government cannot both keep servicing debt and buoying the currency . Those houses will appreciate in value JPY denominated and crater in terms of USD.
  - CapricornNoble 4y ago
    So....living in Japan with a USD income we should actually wait longer to pull the trigger on buying real estate? I was already sizing up properties across the country, putting together a plan for my family to buy properties for rental income because they are already cheap...
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  New York "metro" is always tricky. All of New Jersey, southern Connecticut, Staten Island, the Bronx, outer Brooklyn, outer Queens: Who the hell cares. Yes, I will be down-voted for this comment! My point: Defining inner city NYC that is wealthy requires some care and consideration. All the interesting "real estate action" happens in a very small radius from midtown Manhattan.
marak830 4y ago
And the apartment as a comparison to houses doesn't help much, as Japanese houses tend to be smaller than western. Source is me, I've been living in Japan for over 10 years now.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Western being what exactly? Houses are rarely spacious in a lot of what qualifies as 'west'. You can't compare The Netherlands and Belgium with Germany, let alone the US.
  - marak830 4y ago
    Sorry I should have specified, I was referring to Aussie homes(my home country) or US. My bad. But even then I'd probably guess Japanese are smaller. I have not looked at the numbers and will go look now though, I should have before commenting. Edit: you're right(as I had assumed being familiar), Netherlands average from a quick search is roughly on par.
HWR_14 4y ago
> because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. But isn't the entire Tokyo Metropolis under an hour by mass transit? That's a far cry from Buffalo. Like, Buffalo cannot commute to NYC by anything other than private aircraft.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  If you replace "Buffalo" with "an hour out of NYC" his point still stands.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    Except that housing an hour out of NYC seems to be more expensive than the housing the article talks about.
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      I don't know - an hour out of Penn Station takes you as far as places like Wyandanch on Long Island with the LIRR, or Stamford, CT with the MNR.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        I specifically looked at Stamford when I wrote that. Tokyo is in the 350-600sq ft range by the article. You can currently get a fairly spartan 600 sq ft in Stamford for the price listed (one vacancy). That's more than the average the article cites, but in the same range. After all, you'd have to compare the outskirts of Stamford with the outsirkts of Tokyo.
        saalweachter 4y ago
        Well, yeah, if you take the commuter rail line along the densely populated coastline. If you take the Harlem Line up to the middle of nowhere, you can get to Katonah in an hour on the express trains during peak hours.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
steveBK123 4y ago
Japan also has a declining population, extremely low immigration, and minimal foreign housing purchases. These are the opposite factors of what urban US is facing. Even Tokyo metro area population has been in decline and is forecast to decline, as NYCs continues growing. Tokyo housing-space-per-resident being higher is probably also an artifact of lower household formation / childrearing than western cities. That said Tokyo has different zoning which allows for smaller apartment units than NYC/SF/etc and should be applauded for that.
vladvasiliu 4y ago
I don't have numbers, but I doubt that 12.3% of people living in Paris proper (the 20 arrondissements) live in detached houses. Yes, there are villas in the city, but they're extremely rare. I don't see them housing more than 1 in 10 people. So their numbers seem indeed dubious. Edit: I found official stats (French only): https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2011101?geo=DEP-75#chiffre-cle-3 https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2011101?geo=DEP-75#chif... Table "LOG T2". "maisons" = "house", "appartements" = "apartments" In 2019, less than 1% of housing stock were "houses".
allturtles 4y ago
Your point that we have to be careful about the basis of comparison is well-taken, but your analogy is not sound. New York state is 141,000 km2, it's over 1/3 the size of all of Japan.
citrusybread 4y ago
> it uses Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo-to, basically "Tokyo State", area 2,194.07 km2) for comparisons, not central Tokyo (23-ku, aka the former Tokyo City, area 619 km2). So it's basically the same as saying houses in New York are much larger than those in Paris, because you're comparing all of New York State including housing in Buffalo etc with the 20 arrondissements of central Paris. As others have said, difference between NYC and NYS is much much larger than that... But for reference, Ottawa, Canada, is one of the largest cities in Canada by area at 2778 km^2. But the Greater Toronto Area, what many call "Toronto", is ~7000km^2 and only has ~6 million people... Toronto proper is only 630km^2, with 3 million people. The scale here is reasonable, Tokyo has excellent transportation options that make it realistic to live anywhere in that region.

InfiniteRand 4y ago

Better than New York, Paris and London is a low bar

quickthrower2 4y ago
It is a big modern industrious city, what should it be compared to?

rgmerk 4y ago

Paris, London and New York - the key points of comparison - aren’t exactly known for their spacious housing. One other point that many of the Tokyo fans don’t acknowledge is how extraordinarily ugly the place is. Sure, it’s clean (more than you can say for New York) but clearly nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside. And I’ve never seen more miserable public parks in a developed country.

franciscop 4y ago
I have to agree and disagree :) First, it's not clean, it's just different way of unclean and only during certain periods of the day. But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows. On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner. "Nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside" => completely agree, my pet peeve here is that one of the best towns geographically speaking of Japan is probably the ugliest town I've seen in my life in a 1st world country (Kawaguchiko, with the beautiful lake, lush forest and Fuji San nearby). "never seen more miserable public parks" again have to agree, the median local park is taken out of a horror movie. Though there are* a bunch of very, very beautiful ones!
- bluepizza 4y ago
  > But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows. Apart from the worst parts of Roppongi on a Monday morning, I have never ever seen this.
  - franciscop 4y ago
    Trash days 5~8am, normal days in any place with many restaurants 11pm~8am basically (Shibuya, Ebisu, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, etc).
    - 4y ago

eps 4y ago

Offtopic, but > the tallest building in Tokyo is only 255 meters There is a hotel in this tower (called Andaz) and it has a proper swimming pool on the 37th floor. Quite an jaw-dropping experience on its own, but doubly so during an earthquake.

bluepizza 4y ago
You barely feel it during an earthquake, because the building has multiple stabilising mechanisms.
- eps 4y ago
  Yep, but you do feel it, because something is... off.
  - bluepizza 4y ago
    Ah, yes, It’s super freaky. I worked from a hotel room at the Yokohama Landmark Tower for a month, and I had some freak outs. Your balance feels off, even if you don’t feel the shakes.
belter 4y ago
https://youtu.be/lJ8cv4t2tT8 https://youtu.be/lJ8cv4t2tT8

davidkuennen 4y ago

As someone being in Tokyo right now chatting with locals about this topic it's just not generally true or comparable to other cities. Sure there are parts of Tokyo that are cheaper, but Tokyo is gigantic. All the places that "matter" with reasonably fast commute are very expensive and small.

marak830 4y ago
I live in fujisawa, takes me about 30 minutes to get to Yokohama which is pretty damn major. House prices here are quite reasonable, nice distance to the ocean for the weekends. I'm considering buying and building a house in the next year or two.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
diceduckmonk 4y ago
> locals about this topic Are the locals foreigners or Japanese? The set of housing options are different between the two. There's an implicit price premium and threshold on the units with landlords receptive to foreigners. The cheaper accommodations are not going to be available especially if tenant isn't fluent in the language. > All the places that "matter" with reasonably fast commute are very expensive and small. I live 3 minutes commute to Shibuya, and my rent is half my rent in an outer borough of NYC. Brand new lofty unit designed by a famous architect. Space efficiency-wise, it's equal if not greater. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison to just look at floorspace, since Japan has lots of infrastructure such as actually convenient stores which means people don't need to own as much household items.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  How much do you have to pay in monthly housing costs with the inclusion of utilities and amenities?
- TedShiller 4y ago
  Then why doesn't everyone just live in Tokyo? You just got your answer.

franciscop 4y ago

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-the-average-household-have-in-japan/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-much-living-sp... [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.

WeylandYutani 4y ago
It is the price one has to pay for living in the city and being fashionable. I see this in Amsterdam: rich expats who barely grasp that there is a country outside the city.
cannam 4y ago
I don't know about NY or Paris, but the comparison against London seems fair enough. They seem to be using a Tokyo metropolitan area of about 2000 km^2, and comparing it with Greater London at 1572 km^2. And indeed, people throughout Greater London are entirely used to living in small, damp, shared boxes.
- franciscop 4y ago
  The geography of the "cities" is very different though (look at the density of population maps provided), where "Tokyo Metropolitan" is one third pure mountains, then one third low-density living (think L.A.) and then one third what people normally thinks of the city of Tokyo, all of these in a sausage-like shape, while "Greater London" grows in a circle and so it's a circle-ish area. See this image with the labels, we should compare the green one instead of the 3 of them. Ideally "Tokyo" would be something more like the purple one, but the purple one is nothing. So we have "23 wards" (green), or Tokyo Metropolitan (the 3 together), neither of which is the best comparison, but def the green one vs London is much better than all of them (the purple dashes are how I think London would look like approx): https://imgur.com/a/nCmkE80 https://imgur.com/a/nCmkE80

tjpnz 4y ago

I'm looking at buying next year. Unlike where I'm from (New Zealand) property in Tokyo is better quality (although that's not really difficult) and dare I say cheaper.

Jach 4y ago
I've also heard it's rather easier for a foreigner to buy than to find a willing landlord...
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  That's a stretch and it is hard to get a home loan in your first years. It is true that when searching for a rental you will probably come across landlords that don't rent to foreigners, and more that won't rent to Chinese people. Many landlords also expect you to speak at least some Japanese. That being said, it's competitive only for average sized/priced places. Both low end and above-average properties are easier to rent.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Just out of curiosity - is it largely just "I only speak Japanese and don't know how I'd deal with a foreigner" thing or do those kinds of landlords tend to think negatively of the foreigners? As an immigrant I know it can be a bit fiddly to resolve some things when there's a language barrier, but as long as both sides are patient and willing to try things can go relatively smoothly
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - tjpnz 4y ago
      In my own experience it's very much about the language barrier. I was able to smooth over many issues getting into my current place by mentioning my wife was Japanese.
Dracophoenix 4y ago

fareesh 4y ago

Older cities have a lot of legacy issues that manifest in multiple ways. Housing is one of them. Solving the problem is hard since the cities can't be re-planned and rebuilt.

thiago_fm 4y ago

The graph with many countries is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. It says with $1500 rent you can get a 140m2 or 1500 sqft apartment in Berlin. HAHA! MAYBE IN THE 90s. Not to mention that I'm willing to bet that less of 5% of housing in Berlin is 140m2 or higher. (might be 1% or less even)

nikanj 4y ago
These often use average rents paid today. They tend to be much lower than average rents if you rent a home today. One of the main reasons why older people seem to think millennials are complaining about nothing: they locked in their rental rates back in the last millennia, and the laws generally only allow low-single-digit increases per year

newaccount74 4y ago

I think measuring per person is pretty misleading. A single person living in a 25m^2 appartment would be quite cramped. A family with two young kids living in 100m^2 is pretty spacious. So if you look at living space per person, then societies with smaller household sizes will appear to have more living space per person. so if you measure that, you also have to compare how many people are in households as well.

bombcar 4y ago
Yeah, a more accurate measurement would be "baseline + X" - you don't really need to go above the average household size, but you can fit people in way denser than 25m^2 (270 sq ft) if they share common areas. The average dorm room is 230 sq ft (with a roommate!) but the dorm provides common areas and other amenities. Another thing to consider when comparing countries is what is considered "living space" and what is not - some areas have large porches that are not considered "living space" even though they serve similar functions to what a living room might in other parts of the world.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  It depends on how you measure those 25m^2; I lived in a studio in Copenhagen for a while and my 25m^2 included the common areas / roof garden etc. Private space was around 16-20m^2, and I am being generous here.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, so many things go into it that it's hard to just compare numbers, you really have to live it to compare.
JTBooth 4y ago
Agree - I moved from 40m2 alone to 60m2 with my wife, and the experience is much better. We still have one sink, one toilet, one bathtub, one washing machine. Her space takes up maybe 10m2. The free walking-around space probably went from 5m2 to 25m2.
4y ago

yrgulation 4y ago

I dont know how accurate this report is, but i do wish western europe was as well organised and clean as japan. Many, if not all, west european capitals are a mess with poor living conditions with no signs of improvement.

athenot 4y ago
Purely as a visitor, Zürich definitely felt cleaner and better organized than other cities in western Europe.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  An outlier indeed. Still feels a bit boring, but it ticks all the marks in my initial comment. I think europe strayed far from its path. We should look at japan and east asia (singapore, south korea) and reflect on why they look so much more advanced and well maintained compared to our countries.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I think Switzerland in general is exceptional and not at all representative of the rest of western Europe.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I spent a month in Tokyo in 29 Square meters it was painfully small, and expensive. It was the best I could find. These numbers are deeply suspicious.

diceduckmonk 4y ago
The standard rental contract in Japan is not 1-year, but 2-years. For these engagements, as with employment, it's about consistency, predictability and long-term commitment. One-month is ultra-short by Japanese standards. The rental inventory is distinct from regular apartments. This is effectively a hotel.
- amrocha 4y ago
  Kinda, it's 2 years but you can usually leave anytime after 6 months with no fee. After 2 years you need to sign a new contract, which means new fees etc

assbuttbuttass 4y ago

When did paying 30% of your paycheck in rent become "very affordable?"

coryrc 4y ago
What else do you need to spend lots of money on?
- rfreytag 4y ago
  In the US you might need to plan for health care expenses and higher-education.
Aleksdev 4y ago
30% of your paycheck seems to be the general rule for housing. At least in the states.

andy_ppp 4y ago

Every time these articles come up I think about what a shafting people in Japan are taking on property and why western media want to write articles lying about it to the public. Japanese property is tiny by any metric compared to western property; maybe there are some rich people who would like to remove housing regulations and make more money selling crap tiny plastic homes to people at absurd valuations…

dontbenebby 4y ago

Maybe it's only cheap due to the barriers to immigration? I've only been to Japan once, but I noticed how they're very formal compared to the various EU countries. I keep meeting people who move to Appalachia and not register that the things that made it attractive (low crime etc) won't stay that way if people keep talking to me like I'm literally retarded. (Every time someone tells me "I work in technology or whatever as I walk to get my espresso, I want to say "Great! Enjoy locking down your house like my South African neighbor told me they had to during apartheid, I've had too many of these conversations where the person was speaking in bad faith.")

diceduckmonk 4y ago
> Maybe it's only cheap due to the barriers to immigration? Permanent Residency is helpful towards procuring a mortgage, but you don't need a visa to buy property in Japan. Non-resident cash buyers had no problem pushing up the real estate market in Vancouver, Canada.

yboris 4y ago

I paid $1,500 for furnished 2 bedroom: Can confirm. Three years ago I spent 2 months in a furnished two bedroom apartment two stops away from Shinjuku - paid $1,500 / month. Had three different subway stations within ~7 min walk each. Great location, very inexpensive. The company I used is Fontana - English speaking, they set up gas/electric/water and all I had to do was pay for them at the convenience store nearby (7 Eleven). The only requirement is a 2-month minimum stay. Will do again.

dcolkitt 4y ago

Should also be noted that Tokyo is one of the few major metropolises in the world where the price of housing has not meaningfully increased in real terms since 2000[1]. The Japanese constitution drastically limits zoning, building and land use restrictions. As a result the city of Tokyo builds more new housing than all of California or England.[2] (And no, this isn't because of Japan's demographics. While Japan as a whole is stagnating, the population of Tokyo is still increasing as fast as London, New York or the Bay Area because of high rural to urban migration.) Tokyo is very much proof that NIMBY reforms are the solution to the housing crisis in the West. Deregulating the ability of property developers to build new housing will incontrevirtibly increase supply, blunt runaway housing costs, and make dense cities with high economic opportunity affordable for the middle class. [1]https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-costs-tokyo https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-... [2]https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-housing-better-case-1-japan/ https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-...

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Even though everyone wants to live in Tokyo, the same is true for hit real estate markets in other countries that it is being compared to. We aren’t comparing Tokyo to Duluth. Lack of building codes like must have central heat or must have bathroom also can bring housing prices down.
- Danieru 4y ago
  Tokyo's building codes do require bathrooms. Plus minimum sunshine for a room to count as a bedroom, along with shutters on all windows. What caught my eye about your comment is central heating. Japan in fact penalizes central heating. Not just not requiring it but going so far as to increase property taxes slightly. In Japan's case it is a desire to reduce energy intensity in a country dependent on energy imports.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    You wrote: <<Japan in fact penalizes central heating>> I belive it. Japan housing is so inefficient for a wealthly / highly industriaslied country: It is bizarre! I tried to Google about this topic, but I did not find anything. Can you provide a hint about your source?

dark-star 4y ago

if you can't even tell where Tokyo and Osaka are on your maps, you probably shouldn't publish articles about Japan. Who knows what other numbers or diagrams are wrong there...

diceduckmonk 4y ago
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2323:_Modeling_Study https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2323:_Modeling_St...

logicalmonster 4y ago

Outside of either aggressive capitalist desire to continuously lower wages or some groups wanting to destroy Japanese culture, I've never understood why there was such an extreme panic by some about Japan's lower birth rates to the point that they urged mass immigration there. A stabilizing population on an island with limited space seems like a good thing. A little more space opens up for living and real-estate prices might become more favorable. Maybe there's room for more parks and other things that make life good. When conditions become more favorable, people will be able to reproduce more. We see in the animal kingdom the predator-prey cycle that population takes care of itself. When there's too many rabbits or deer, there's no cause for concern: the plentiful food supply means that wolves and foxes will be able to reproduce more and take care of the situation. When there's too many wolves/foxes and the situation reverses, the scarce food supply means that the predators aren't able to flourish and the rabbits and deer are able to reproduce more. I'd say that the human desire for reproduction might work in the same way, only instead of prey, maybe real-estate prices and quality of life is the cyclical variable to note.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
GDP can’t go up without strong reproduction and/or immigration. The economy stagnates and government debt becomes massive, which is what you see with Japan. The scary thing is that this is something the USA and lots of other countries are headed towards as well. https://dailyinfographic.com/government-debt-by-country https://dailyinfographic.com/government-debt-by-country
- mrep 4y ago
  GDP can grow with a stable population if your Real gross domestic product per capita is growing which it has been for the USA [0]. Japans has barely grown for the past 30 years which is their big problem [1]. [0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDJPN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDJPN
  - 4y ago

AtreidesTyrant 4y ago

I would love to stay there, but keeping western hours for your job would be very difficult. Not to mention the dislike of foreigners

midoridensha 4y ago
The hours depends on your job, and the "dislike of foreigners" is mostly a myth. Tons of foreigners live here and love it.

mistrial9 4y ago

there is a maps-and-data company in Berkeley, California (urban planners) that maintains detailed and mostly-current information on occupancy for all of California; both renters and homes; unending policy battles behind-the-scenes about covid-19 and eviction very much at the fore. (trivia it is in the same physical building as the old After Dark screensaver company, so long ago)

twobitshifter 4y ago

These statistics would be much more useful if the median had been used for prices and floor areas. These are both long tailed distributions, so the average is skewed. I would wager many of the “unexpected” results are due to this effect.

dahfizz 4y ago

32 square meters per person? That's 344 square feet. It's amazing to me people would choose to live in such a tiny space.

nikanj 4y ago
To be fair, in the US people live in a cardboard box on the street
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
That’s slightly larger that my very expensive apartment in Paris proper. I moved there from a bigger place when I broke up years ago and I’m surprised by how liveable it is. It’s not big but it’s mostly fine. For the time I spent there it seems like a good deal. Working from home was annoying when it was mandatory however.

m3at 4y ago

A peculiarity of renting in Japan (not mentioned in the article): you often need to advance a substantial amount of money upon starting a lease. It varies but a rule of thumb is about 5 months of rent. Part of it is advanced rent, but some is non-recoverable (key money, brokerage fee, insurance, cleaning fee...). Contracts are often two years, and at the end of it you typically have a renewal fee as well, at around a month of rent.

rubslopes 4y ago

Why these people think I will subscribe to their mailing list before I even read the third sentence?

GolDDranks 4y ago

For a data point: (admittedly, barely) inside Tokyo 23 wards, 15 min walk to nearest station, 70 sqm (753 sqft) 3LDK (3 bedrooms and a living-dining-kitchen). 140000 jpy / month. (945 usd at the current rate.) I think it's a reasonable deal. Less or similar than I would pay for a similar flat in my native Helsinki, Finland.

didip 4y ago

Ever since experiencing sticker shock in Silicon Valley housing 7 years ago. Housing in Tokyo or Seoul no longer looked expensive in my eyes.

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: How Tokyo avoided the affordable housing crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32894963 - Sept 2022 (90 comments)

TedShiller 4y ago

People who think denser housing lowers rents haven't been to a big city. Someone always mentions "But Tokyo...". That person never lives in Tokyo.

tagami 4y ago

Tokyo and Osaka are reversed on the map