It's kind of annoying that people bring up Japan so often. Japan has had a history of catastrophic earthquakes that destroy everything. Necessarily they feel th

It's kind of annoying that people bring up Japan so often. Japan has had a history of catastrophic earthquakes that destroy everything. Necessarily they feel that physical structures should serve a more transient purpose. Regardless, the underlying land still appreciates, it's just that the structure isn't really that valuable. Even in the United States the structure depreciates. You can go to any county assessment site and see how the assessed value of a property (structure + land) changes over the years. What you'll notice is that the structure goes down a little, and land goes up a little. The main issue with United States, unlike Japan, is a culture of investing in real estate. As long as that's true nothing will change.