91–100 of 121 posts
Plus Tokyo is almost 100km wide. That's a huge area and of course there are places where housing is dirt cheap because people are fleeing away.
I think this headline is misleading in 2 ways. 1. yes you might get a house at this price but it's either 1-2 hours out of the city center (which is fine, just saying Tokyo is large.) Or alternatively it's in bad neighborhoods. (bad is relative if you are from the US) 2. your house will most likely look like this: https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. here are listings: https://ww…
I think this headline is misleading in 2 ways. 1. yes you might get a house at this price but it's either 1-2 hours out of the city center (which is fine, just saying Tokyo is large.) Or alternatively it's in bad neighborhoods. (bad is relative if you are from the US) 2. your house will most likely look like this: https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. here are listings: https://ww…
>Or alternatively it's in bad neighborhoods. (bad is relative if you are from the US) I've never been to Japan, but I imagine that a bad Japanese neighborhood is incredibly safe compared to a bad U.S. neighborhood. In a bad U.S. neighborhood one has to regularly take precautions in order to not be physically assaulted or even killed by other people. >your house will most likely look like this: https://www.ii-ie2.net/…
I think this headline is misleading in 2 ways. 1. yes you might get a house at this price but it's either 1-2 hours out of the city center (which is fine, just saying Tokyo is large.) Or alternatively it's in bad neighborhoods. (bad is relative if you are from the US) 2. your house will most likely look like this: https://www.ii-ie2.net/dat/5ba1164d.jpg Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. here are listings: https://ww…
Given your name, I guess you live in Japan, so I'll just give my opinion for others who have never lived here. I also think the title is misleading, though I wouldn't express it so dramatically. One thing to consider is that Tokyo is a prefecture, not a city. There are rural areas of Tokyo (like really rural), though most of it is very suburban. Anybody who has lived in the suburbs in western countries would probably…
On the other hand, rural (so cheap) areas are less packed so sunlight is less of an issue.
This article is citing another article from the same source [1] "The typical Tokyo metro area starter home would be an apartment (around 750 square feet) or detached wooden house (around 970 square feet) located in the outer suburbs. According to Zoe Ward of Japan Property Central, the average Tokyo office worker has about a one-hour commute by train each morning." So part of the answer is that homes are tiny by Amer…
Even square footage isn't a perfect metric for cross-national comparison. For example, furniture in Japan (at places like Nitori) is often designed for smaller spaces. When I lived there, a $300 couch fit[1] perfectly in my living room, while it would've looked hilariously undersized in any North American house. I was more comfortable in that apartment, approx 480 sqft, than I was in a 1000 sqft apartment I had in No…
The cultural differences make this comparison less meaningful than you’d expect. In Japan you absolutely never have friends over to your house or apartment. Everyone meets at bars or restaurants. Similar to nyc, many apartments in Tokyo are a few hundred square feet and literally only serve as a place to sleep and shower. That means houses aren’t such a major thing and so the Japanese invest way less time and energy…
Absolute statements like that are just clearly not true. I've been to Japanese friends' apartments, even visited friends' family barbecue or wine tasting night.
Less common doesn't mean it never happens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sayonara sunlight, hello neighbor. This is the sort of thing that markets solve really well. If you want a dwelling unit with those properties, pay for it. If they're less important to you than cost, don't. If one is $300,000 and the other $600,000, it's very reasonable to choose affordability and go to a park.
From my observational experience, and limited study on the issue, markets don't seem to be solving this optimally, at least in Melbourne, Australia. Overall, the market for apartments seems to be supply constrained. The main factors: 1. Government approval is required to build large apartment buildings. In general, this seems to lag behind demand. 2. Large buildings take a long time to build 3. There have been a numb…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> despite being substantially smaller in population than countries with economies of comparable size Which countries would that be? There are very few with economies of comparable size. The next above Japan is nearly three times larger (China). Besides, it's super easy to avoid that GDP / population confusion by looking at GDP per capita. The US GDP per capita figure ($65,111) for 2019 was 59% higher than Japan ($40,…
Yes, China and the US, which are both substantially larger in population. Japan also outperforms most countries that outsize it in terms of population. >Besides, it's super easy to avoid that GDP / population confusion by looking at GDP per capita. Not so much. A high GDP per capita is a poor measure of the average person's economic wellbeing on its own. Looking at it within the context of measures of economic inequa…
As of late I have started to question the long-term prospect of indefinite economic growth, and what the implications of challenging the status-quo here are. I would be interested as to what people's perspectives are around the likelihood of advanced nations inevitably sharing a fate similar to Japan's.
> The first thing to note is that in Japan, housing isn’t an investment. It’s a place to live. The country’s slow population growth means that increases in property values aren’t guaranteed I feel like this is a misleading way to put it. Japanese houses decrease in value, generally quite severely - the conventional wisdom is that after a few decades you might as well just tear it down and build a new one. So there's…
Ah, how the wheel of life turns. Back before the Lost Decades ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan) ), Japan was a completely different country. " JAPAN'S 100-YEAR BANK LOANS (FORTUNE Magazine) By Susan Moffat May 21, 1990 " (FORTUNE Magazine) – The Japanese, famous for saving, are now loading their future generations with debt. Nippon Mortgage and Japan Housing Loan, two big home lenders, are offering…