Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Expensive Is Housing In Japan?
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I'm not really sure for how many people $1000 a month would be considered "affordable"... The fact is there are much cheaper housing in Tokyo than that as well...
The cheapest apartments would be designed for college students and are like 25 m^2, have bathroom/shower combo and a tiny kitchenette. In an old building you can find those for $400-500 a month in the city, and out in the suburbs something like that can go all the way down to $300 a month. Go even further out to places like saitama or chiba (the exurbs, I think?) about 40-60 minutes away from downtown and you can even find 1Ks for < $300 a month. |
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Usagi-kun
 Posts: 877 Location: Nashville, TN |
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Yikes. As someone who has moved about five times in the last ten years, this is about what you would expect in apartment housing in the modest end areas close to me. If you are willing to go out of the cities to suburban or even rural areas, prices go lower but have less conveniences like restaurants and grocery stores. I don't know what it is like in other cities, but houses here are hot ticket commodities: If you get one, you are very lucky and more inclined to modify than build (except for people involved in gentrification, they love to build.) A house can be on the market for a little as 24 hours and receive multiple offers and next day closing. Higher end apartments will double that $1800/month initial estimate. The good news is that if you are selling, you can at least double your asking price. I'm hopefully not moving again any time soon, but I am going to sit on my current situation, and the bubble has yet to pop, but it will eventually. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 497 |
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Yikes. I love in one of the top ten largest cities in the USA, have a house that is almost three times that size, and my mortgage payment is slightly over a third of that. It's hard to imagine living somewhere where property is that expensive |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Never underestimate the human capacity to adapt to unfavourable situations! My tiny room in a maisonette shared with strangers is just about affordable if one eschews luxuries. Whilst my salary keeps me perennially out of reach of a mortgage, as is the case for many, the convenience of urban living compensates for the most part. |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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This whole market description is incredibly alien to me, being from an area dominated by turn-of-the-century triple deckers and suspicion toward postwar construction. My room in a 3br (plus small enclosed porch br that functions for guests but would overwhelm the fridge space if lived in) one-bath in a triple decker is about $1000/mo.
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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In many cities, it’s generally cheaper to buy than rent. My city is considered one of the most affordable in the country, despite new tech jobs driving up rents, and my old apartment was $1,200 a month for a 3 bedroom. Now, had I bought 3 bedroom house in the same neighborhood, my mortgage would have been less than half of that. I recently moved to a more rural area for nursing school and commute to work. My rent is much, much cheaper, which will allow me to cut back on my hours if I need to. But my commute is now 45-90 minutes, depending on traffic. |
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jazzyrei
Posts: 2 |
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I grew up in Tokyo for a part of my life, then moved to LA with my family and I recently moved to San Francisco. From my understanding, San Francisco is one of the most, if not the most, expensive city in terms of rent (exceeded Manhanttan NY). I pay $3000+ a month for a Jr. One Bedroom (no roommates) and it is honestly crazy how ridiculously expensive rent is here. That is an average rent for SF (in the city) and even right outside, like San Jose. LA/OC is about half that around $1500 ~ $2000/month for a decent place, and I was recently talking to some friends and Tokyo and was surprised San Francisco far exceeded Tokyo. So in contrast, yes, I would much rather pay $1000/month. However, I do recognize that is still too much to put into a property that you don't even own and will never see that money back. |
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zrdb
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I live in a state where the price of housing has been going up exponentially and is at the point where it was just before the great crash of 2008-2009. I live in a small 420 square foot condo which is perfect for me but as the goddamn value of it has gone up so have my property taxes. At least the place is very affordable for my budget. Still it isn't as bad as a couple of other places in the us.
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xchampion
 Posts: 370 Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho |
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San Francisco is notorious for their high prices. I have friends working for tech companies like uber and google making over 100,000 a year and even they can barely afford paying rent. Its $3000 a month in the city just for a 1 bedroom apartment like your paying. If you want to add another bedroom or two it can creep up to $4000 a month or even more. Those numbers are probably on the low end too. If you go by the rule of thumb that 30% of your income can/should go to housing you have to be making 6 figures just to get by.(I'm sorry if that outs your income, but those numbers are just the facts unless you're just very frugal on everything). Almost any city including those in Japan are going to be more affordable than San Francisco. |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10421 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Most people spend more on a home they own than they would on rent, plus there's the matter of that significant down payment. A good, safe investment in something like an S&P500 will outperform the investment in a house most of the time (ignoring if you get lucky and buy in a city just before a real-estate boom, but that can happen in your S&P500 too) even after you factor in the cost of rent. Plus, a renting is much lower stress than ownership, and you'll never end up "under water" if the market goes down. In Japan in particular, houses are a terrible investment. As Justin mentioned, people don't want to live in a used house. So house and condo values often depreciate as opposed to appreciate. Prices went up in the last couple of years, but that was for the first time in decades, and most people expect them to drop again starting in 2021. As for the least affordable housing markets in the world in 2018: 1 - Hong Kong 2 - Sydney, Au 3 - Vancouver, Ca 4 - Santa Cruz, US 5 - San Jose, US 6 - Melbourne, Au 7 - Santa Barbara, US 7 - Los Angeles, US 8 - Honolulu, US 9 - San Francisco, US 9 - Salinas, US 10 - Tauranga, NZ This list is based on the comparison of housing cost to median income. So LA ends up less affordable than SF because the median income in SF is higher than LA. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-expensive-cities-to-live-in-around-the-world-in-2018-2018-1 On the note of Tokyo Housing, I think one thing that is very important to understand about Tokyo housing is that people are accustomed to smaller apartments. the 85 sq.m used in Justin's example would be considered a rather large apartment in Tokyo. 100 Sq.m. would be huge. For a single person, 35~45 Sq.m. is considered very reasonable. As Samuelp mentioned, poorer people and students often live in apartments well under 30 Sq.m., and if you go 30 minutes out of central Tokyo, still in an urban area, the prices start dropping drastically. When people ask me if apartments are expensive in Tokyo, my answer is usually, "No, they're small." |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3951 |
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$1800 a MONTH for 900 square feet?! I can't afford that!
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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Although it's important to note that the Tokyo population has continued to increase (in fact more rapidly than places like San Francisco or New York City) even though the population of Japan has been decreasing. People from 田舎 are just moving from the country to Tokyo fast enough. Tokyo prices have been stable or decreasing because Tokyo builds a lot of housing, unlike the Bay Area or greater New York City. It's "cheap for a major metropolis in a wealthy country," though as noted not cheap compared to rural areas. |
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Ashley Hakker
Posts: 115 |
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Come to Toronto. I pay $1157/mo for about 500 square feet. And that's only because I've been in this unit for 3.5 years and there's limits on how much they can increase my rent each year. For a NEW tenant the asking rate is $1617/mo for units in my building. 
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xchampion
Posts: 370 Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho |
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I don't remember what city it was but an apartment complex evicted everyone from the building who they could not raise prices on, so they could obviously rent out to new resident who they could charge more. Unfortunately the people couldn't do anything about it. |
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jtiskool305
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I live down in Homestead Florida and I pay $1,400 a month for a 3/2 1,200 square foot apartment which is darn cheap compared to those Tokyo prices lol
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