this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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This is for an area of western, suburban Tokyo. Edit: most are going to be around 1.25+ hours into Shinjuku involving transfers and up to a 20 minute walk to the nearest station.
In USD terms, around $76,000. 52.x square meters 3 rooms, bath, dining+kitchen (so one room is presumably getting used as the living room). Another few hundred a year in maintenance/condo fees. But it's in a building from 1976 which is before the latest major earthquake law revision and I would absolutely not live there (property can appreciate in Japan, but houses are not seen as investments and lose value really quickly).
Poking around, there are freestanding houses as well in that range, but they cannot be rebuilt so you're stuck with the existing structure (I don't know to what degree one could legally "Ship of Theseus" the thing; interior renovation is fine). This is mostly due to a change in law requiring at least a 4-meter-wide (IIRC) road connecting to the property (and mostly for emergency services access). You can buy these on the cheap but it's because they're not a long-term solution and you'll be stuck holding the bag on worthless land to all except maybe a neighbor who might want to buy it (but if it's for sale now, they don't).
There are actually a surprising number of buildings after 1981 (latest major earthquake law revision, basically required for mortgage + insurance), but a lot of them are in areas with heavy restrictions (landscape laws, height laws, aviation laws (I have no idea what that one means; maybe it's in a flight path (noisy) or has some additional height/light restrictions?)), etc.
The search site I used doesn't have any good way of searching for used homes without restrictions built after 1981 for comparison and I got tired of clicking.
Prices jump a lot within a 20-minute walk of the closest station; most people don't want to live further.
Could you link an example or something on whatever Japanese zillow is? Because this seems absolutely intriguing to me, if only to see what it looks like.
Suumo.jp Is probably the most popular.
Thanks for the link, definitely an interesting time browsing. And sorry to keep bothering you about Japanese real estate, I'm sure you have more interesting things to think about, but looking at it, the offerings on the "under 20 million yen" page just seem absurdly too good to be true. Like, looking at something like This, 1100 square feet, seemingly fairly recent renovations and built in '94, parking for 3 cars, and only 35 minute walk from the station, yet it's listed for 11.7 million yen/78k usd? Like, from an American perspective, it looks like some Craigslist scam to get your banking info. Is there something getting lost in between cultures? Is the Japanese market really just that much cheaper?
Most people would consider a house that's 30-40 years old at end-of-life. There are likely restrictions on the property about rebuilding or something as well; that's usually the only time you see stuff that cheap.
35 minutes to the station is too far for most people as well (prices drop as soon as you hit 20, typically).
You wouldn't have central heat/air (not a thing here), the insulation is probably very little, etc. That's all still just normal here.
That's pretty interesting to me. The house I grew up in was built in the late 50s, as was the entire neighborhood, making it just under 40 years old by the time I was born, and it's still there today, with the only major renovations being redoing the flooring and replacing appliances.
Is the shorter lifespan more of just a cultural thing, or is it a matter of how housing is built? Because I can certainly see the pricing if it's the latter and it's nearing the point of requiring major maintenance.
Post-war housing shortage led to tons of homes being slapped up quickly to deal with civilian homeless, returning soldiers/prisoners, and US troops. There were basically no standards (there were an absurd amount of homeless due to the firebombings and such) or building codes. Codes got stronger, but many houses were still poor quality (and burnt down often). Bonus fact: this is one reason there are such monocultures of certain trees in Japan; clear-cut to provide lumber and replanted with fast-growing trees for more lumber.
Secondarily, families were (and many still are) multi-generational. So, when a parent retires, the next generation will often take over and often knock down and rebuild. That's becoming less of thing, but it still exists.
Finally, especially when there were few/no regulations, things burnt down a lot, particularly during winter (heating) and when an earthquake would strike. Better standards now, but this was true for quite a while.
So, generally, treat any home/condo you buy as a depreciating asset. The land may increase in value depending upon where it is. In rare cases, the building may as well, but I wouldn't count on it.
That's at least a very TL;DR version based on what I know. There may be more that I don't know as well.