In 2004, you could find a proper 1BR apartment in the East Village for about $1500. Granted, it was still a very gritty area but that's part of the appeal. Flash forward to today, and you have those same apartments breaching $5K. Granted, these apartments are also 1.5 to 2x as large, so from an area perspective it's probably about the same.

(Though keep in mind you don't have many options for smaller units with smaller rooms)

My last apartment before moving here was approximately 75 sqm and 280K JPY a month. (It was last listed at 300K, seems like someone has rented the apartment)
It was also 45 minutes from work, so that would place me, time-wise, in Yokohama.

P.S. I suggest we split this into another thread, because real estate is always an interesting topic ;)

We can take it to a new topic if that is best sure. I am easy.

In NY, living what 4km from the financial CBD at $1500 and now for $5000? 10 years prices change. Heck Roppongi Hills had just come on the market then :) But prices have fluctuated in a high band since then. There have been dips but they have still been above most of the market generally. NY has scarcity working against it as the day and night populations of the central part of Manhattan do not change nearly as dramatically as in Tokyo. Unfortunately there is very little there which from an M&E point of view, safety point of view, neighborhood cleanliness point of view would come within a hundred miles of Tokyo’s central wards. It stands to reason that lower priced housing in an area of scarcity will rise in price. Here in Tokyo prices rise even though there is a non-stop new supply. Therein lies the difference. Now everyone wants to buy these assets which for so long have been lease only. I suspect the price negotiations will get a whole lot easier when individual rather than corporations own the units. Good news for Tokyo residents.

That website tracks the asking price from REINS. Earlier the site provide the complete raw listing data from REINS but your friends from the industry stopped the company from providing this.

It might err on the high side in a weak market.

I used it when I moved to Tokyo. You could see how long a house had been on the market, how much it had rented for many years earlier, etc., etc.

I know of a specific SFH (around 250 SQM) in Akasaka, which is rare, that rented for 1 million in 2008 and then the owner was going to put it on the market for 800k (we thought it was too high) in late 2010 and eventually the asking dropped to 580k in 2011.

I don't think you will experience this type of price cutting in the US.

Wait you mean people had to not publish illegal information? The horror!

What people need to understand about the Japanese real estate market is that contracts are subject to confidentiality in all but a very few cases. Thus anyone claiming to know about prices beyond asking price or an assumed deal price is either breaking the terms of a lease or full of hot air.

Not liking it will get you about as far as my not caring much for tipping in the US.

Sorry.

On prices dropping by nearly 50% from a target price out of line with what the market will bear, I am going to suppose that all markets eventually fall prey to market forces. Japan, and the US alike.

Studio, 1BR and 2BR in decent buildings in Tokyo's central wards average between 13 and 14k per tsubo and have been very stable for a long time. Larger units were going for around 18 to 20k a tsubo pre-Lehman and now are around 16k.

"Illegal" because there is a rotten real estate cartel that seeks to hide data from the public.

Having data showing asking prices is better than nothing. We paid the asking price, which had dropped 25% from when it was listed.

This is also true in the US for rentals. There is no public information beyond asking rental prices. Purchases have public records, but there are often kickbacks from the seller that only show up in the real estate MLS records. In the DC area there are consumer friendly sites that show this information.

The market price for the aforementioned house was 1 million 2008; somebody was paying this unless the owner lied to me. In 2010 the owner sought to rent it for 800k, which was not unreasonable compared to other asking prices, but there were no takers. The last that I saw before it disappeared from the email updates in 2011 was 580k. Clearly, it rented for not much less than this.

You seem to be in denial and claim that this was an outlier. I am just informing about price the price history.

We paid about 10k per tsubo (3.3 SQM). The asking was 15k after we moved out. My impression is that price per SQM is higher for smaller units.

The content of this thread was originally posted in the http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/japan...ash-japan.html thread and has been carved out to form a new and separate topic.

Prospero
Senior Moderator

Back to the OP's question: It doesn't have to be expensive. If you don't require luxury, you can travel quite reasonably. The JR Pass is a great deal if you are going to be making a round trip between Tokyo and Kyoto or the equivalent. If you can't find a meal in a mom-and-pop restaurant for ¥1500 or less, you aren't trying. If you are content with an adequate but small and non-luxurious hotel with tiny private bath, you can find it in Tokyo for between ¥8000 and ¥10000 and as little as ¥5000 in small towns. Public transit in the larger cities is charged by distance traveled.

In fact, I think you get more for your money in Japan than in the UK or Scandinavia. Certainly I would hesitate to stay in a hotel that charged the equivalent of US$80 a night in a major US city, but not so in a major city in Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...asurement#Area

Speaking of tsubo, I find these units quite interesting, wonder why tsubo is the area of 2 tatami mats and not say, 6 which makes up a normal room. Maybe 2 tatami mats make up the size of the futon closet? :confused:

Then there is of course the point that most tatami mats are not the same size !:p

By the way, here's a fun Freakonomics segment on private Japanese homes
http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/27/w...dio-podcast-3/

Restricting competition and maintaining prices? Can you honestly see the big 4 players of Tokyo’s central 3 wards colluding? Competing, yes. Colluding, no. A very silly assertion.

To paraphrase Alexander Pope, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. To characterize an entire market based on a single data point is by no one’s standards accurate.

I am not sure about the residential market data available in the US, but office leasing data in the US and the incentives offered are listed and such data is easily purchased. This is what makes it so awkward to explain to people that the concept of “market price” with which they are familiar is very different here and the openness of information is not comparable.

Me in denial? Is the insinuation that I am denying an entire market can be defined by one person’s experience? That is not called denial, that is called economics.

Now if I had been categorized as “ITB”, the label would have been a lot closer to the mark ;)

I wonder at the meaning of decent and at the term central wards. If decent means Grade A then the price described is about 10,000 off the mark. If decent seeks to define an apartment that is quite acceptable by the standards of most people in their 20’s – 50’s, i.e. the non-expat and non-super wealthy local population, then that is pretty close.

Depending on who you are asking, the central wards are the central 3 or those plus Shinjuku and Shibuya. In several areas there are many choices at the price point mentioned here. In the better areas the price creeps up dramatically, often on a building by building basis. Up to 30,000 would be very normal in these areas.

Prices have been, in the last 10 years, up then down then down further and then up and recently up even further. What does everyone think will happen in the run-up to the Olympics? ;)

A whole lot more construction, dust, more dengue, and fewer line-ups at pop-corn and pancake shops :p . The price may go up, or it may not, certainly connected business groups will make tons of cash, while the deficit will go higher. Perhaps Minato-Ward or the Metro Gov. will release the Aoyama North Danchi to developers, perhaps they will just leave it there to further crumble.

Don't know if Central Tokyo(the area you describe above mjm) will ever be any more important on the world stage than it has been for the last few decades, and who can tell what will happen during the next shock ? I am enjoying reading about the bun fight about the Olympic stadium....no doubt they will get something built !