Houses in Tokyo? big/small?

[Varin]

Please help!

I had heard that house are really really expensive in japan
(especially in tokyo) But do they get cheaper in other areas?

or on the country side maybe?

[Henbaka]

Urgent much?

[MMM]

Japan is just like Canada and every other country in the world. If you want ot live in Toronto or Montreal then it will be more expensive than in Moose Jaw.

[SgtBeavis]

Like MMM said, the further you are from major metro areas, the better the pricing is. However there are some areas that are cheaper than others. Be wary..

My In-laws home is in Hadano. They paid the equivalent of $500,000 when they bought their house in the 1980s. Now the 1800sqft (estimated) house is worth less than $200,000. One really big reason is because it is a neighborhood populated mainly by Koreans.

To be bluntly honest, there isn't a dang thing wrong with the neighborhood its is simply that most Japanese don't want to live in a primarily Korean neighborhood. For some reason, my In-Laws either were unaware of this or they didn't know it was a Korean neighborhood to begin with. Either way, they're screwed from a financial standpoint.

The bursting of the real estate bubble did have a lot to do with the price but many other "non-Korean" neighborhoods have recovered in that area...

Because their real estate nest egg imploded, it is very possible that both of my In-Laws will be coming to live with me in the next decade or so. I hope they like Texas.

[MMM]

Sgt. Beavis...

One thing you need to know is that the resale value of homes in Japan is more like the resale value of cars than it is like homes in US.

In the US 5/6 home purchases are for used home.

In Japan it is about the opposite. 5/6 home purchases are for new homes.

So if everyone is moving into new homes, what happens to the old ones? They are destroyed.

500,000 for an 1800 sq ft. house is pretty overpriced for Hadano, but you said it was built in the 1980s, so that makes sense. Everything was overpriced back then, until the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s. Hadano used to be a big tobacco town, but that dried up (along with property values) in the mid-80s as well.

I'll be very frank and say I have a feeling your in-laws are using Koreans as a convenient scapegoat for what-ended-up as a not-that-great property investment.

[kireikoori]

Destroyed homes? Man that stinks.
There's got to be a lot of really cool old homes in Japan.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by SgtBeavis

My In-laws home is in Hadano. They paid the equivalent of $500,000 when they bought their house in the 1980s. Now the 1800sqft (estimated) house is worth less than $200,000. One really big reason is because it is a neighborhood populated mainly by Koreans.

I`m going to STRONGLY agree with MMM on this, and say that if their house was built in the 1980s, then anything close to $200,000 is freaking AMAZING in terms of remaining value.
Anything over 10 years, and you`ll get a better price on the land if you knock the thing down. Japan does not have good resale values... No, that is an understatement. Houses here are considered consumable goods. People do resell them, but more than half of the "used" home sales (which are low to begin with) are for the land, with the house being an actual annoyance.

In other words, I very very much doubt that the Korean aspect has much of anything to do with it. I`m sure there are some people who would discriminate based on that, but they`re in the minority. In fact, if the neighborhood is cheap (and not just your in-laws old house), regardless of the neighbors people would be jumping on it - or rather the land, as it`s the only thing with value at this point.

You also have to take other things into consideration - how near to a station is it? How convenient is it in terms of shopping? etc etc. All of those things will effect the value a whole lot more than residents. I can think of countless scenarios where the price would plummet and not recover that are a lot more plausible.

For example, there is a neighborhood in Nagoya called Sakurayama. In the late 80s, early 90s, it was apparently THE neighborhood to live in. Condos were going for $1,000,000. Houses with land hitting close to twice that....

And then the bubble burst. As a result the prices dropped severely... And all the shops that had made the neighborhood "in" closed. The plans for the future, with all the potential property value increases, were canceled due to lack of funds.
Fast forward to now, and a friend of a friend is trying to sell her house+land. They paid $1,600,000 in 1989 for it. Now they`re being quoted 1/10th of that with the house in place, and 1/8th for the land alone if they`ve gotten rid of the house and did the disposal. No talk of Koreans there. Just misfortune.

I`m going to go with the scapegoat bit and say that, as unpleasant as it may be, I think that the Koreans bit shows more about your in-laws prejudice rather than the real reason the neighborhood has lost it`s value.