Not sure about Japan, but I think that there are some less talked about structural factors that contribute to the housing problems we're seeing today. 1. Housi

Not sure about Japan, but I think that there are some less talked about structural factors that contribute to the housing problems we're seeing today. 1. Housing tends to be extremely expensive in large (mostly coastal) metros. 2. College educated professionals tend to move to these cities. 3. Many small and medium sized towns and cities are experiencing depopulation, and so housing tends to be very inexpensive, but no one is buying it. So, why is this happening? The company town is dead. It used to be that someone would go to work at a company for their entire career. If that company was the main employer in town, you'd move there after college, work your career, and maybe retire to some place sunny. If you lost/quit your job, you'd probably have to move to a new town. Jobs used to be more stable, so this didn't happen often enough to be too big of a problem. The other huge issue is that two income households are now the norm. In the past, if the breadwinner needed to pick up stakes for a new job, there was the logistics of moving to a new town, but there wasn't a second job to consider. Now, if both partners are doing specialized work, they're going to need to find a city that has jobs available for both of their two different specialties. This is much easier in a city. The end result of this is that we get these huge aglomerations of people, because people need to live places where there are a huge variety of jobs within commuting distance. Less stable work and two income households turbocharge this phenomenon.