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I'm not completely sure it's fair to compare Tokyo or Osaka to the like of Paris. There are two major differences that impact prices: - France population is in

by Xixi 12y ago

I'm not completely sure it's fair to compare Tokyo or Osaka to the like of Paris. There are two major differences that impact prices: - France population is increasing steadily, while Japanese population is in for a dive. You cannot reasonably expect land prices to soar in Japan like they will in Paris, since going forward there will be less and less people sharing said land. - Earthquakes (and the lack thereof in France). In France anything less than 50 years old is considered new. In Japan a house over 30 years old has negative value, and such properties are priced as follows: price of land minus price of house destruction/removal. If you are sitting on a lot of cash you simply cannot just buy anything in Tokyo or Osaka and wait for prices to rise. So you have much less speculative investments to drive prices up.

rtpg 12y ago
the waiting for prices to go up is a consequence of zoning laws. There's pretty much a fixed supply of housing in Paris and a rising population, so people just sit on it. The population point isn't super relevant because people are still moving into Tokyo (for work or school mainly), so Tokyo's actually growing _faster_ than Paris is (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+Tokyo+over+population+of+Paris http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+Tokyo+ove...) The big difference being that almost nowhere in the Tokyo metropolitan area has low-density buildings (compared to people in nicer suburbs on the outskirts of paris with huge housing.) The fact that there are so many old buildings in Paris is also a consequence of making things hard to build in Paris. There's more than enough demand to make obscene amounts of money with a decent sized apartment complex in downtown Paris (if you could build it). It's not like Tokyo is falling over every 10 years to earthquakes. One thing is that houses in some Tokyo suburbs are built like crap, so old houses are falling apart (not building many houses out of stone). I think more recent housing is built more sturdily (not sure though) Anyways, the comparaison is fair, because the prime difference is what we're talking about : Zoning laws. There is nothing magical about Paris which makes it impossible to use the same techniques to solve this problem.
bemmu 12y ago
I see a lot of advertising for "earthquake proof" tech to reduce the amount of shaking in houses. I wonder if this 30+ years = worthless thinking in Japan will continue, or if it is just for this generation of houses.

by Xixi 12y ago

rtpg 12y ago

the waiting for prices to go up is a consequence of zoning laws. There's pretty much a fixed supply of housing in Paris and a rising population, so people just sit on it. The population point isn't super relevant because people are still moving into Tokyo (for work or school mainly), so Tokyo's actually growing _faster_ than Paris is (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+Tokyo+over+population+of+Paris http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+Tokyo+ove...) The big difference being that almost nowhere in the Tokyo metropolitan area has low-density buildings (compared to people in nicer suburbs on the outskirts of paris with huge housing.) The fact that there are so many old buildings in Paris is also a consequence of making things hard to build in Paris. There's more than enough demand to make obscene amounts of money with a decent sized apartment complex in downtown Paris (if you could build it). It's not like Tokyo is falling over every 10 years to earthquakes. One thing is that houses in some Tokyo suburbs are built like crap, so old houses are falling apart (not building many houses out of stone). I think more recent housing is built more sturdily (not sure though) Anyways, the comparaison is fair, because the prime difference is what we're talking about : Zoning laws. There is nothing magical about Paris which makes it impossible to use the same techniques to solve this problem.

bemmu 12y ago

I see a lot of advertising for "earthquake proof" tech to reduce the amount of shaking in houses. I wonder if this 30+ years = worthless thinking in Japan will continue, or if it is just for this generation of houses.