[fortedoesnthack]

I think it was true for a long time, and home prices were a good deal. There is also a fair bit of distortion due to near zero interest rates, where banks are willing to loan higher multiples here with 0 down payment.

But house prices have exploded upwards since covid, and wages have not.

So it's an extremely similar situation to everywhere else in the world. And the underlying reason is the same: people buying because they think real estate will go up in value.

By the way, as a fun fact, the most common mortgage in Japan is a ARM. Last I checked, 70-80% of mortgages in Japan are variable rate. The BoJ is currently on a path of adjusting rates upwards. So we will see how this all shakes out. If a situation like the GFC happens, it will not be pretty.

[OneMorePerson]

This is very imprecise data that I have, but my understanding is that pre-covid Tokyo was around 8M yen median household income, and a median home was around 60M yen, so roughly 7-8x the median HHI. Now it's around 80M for a new home and wages are the same.

Seattle even right now is ~110k ish HHI, median home price is ~$800k, so that's 7-8x, before COVID I think it was around ~650k, so around 6x. Also Seattle is known for being pretty expensive, a lot of cities like Houston have an even better multiplier.

It just doesn't seem that different to me. Feels like a lot of people are unhappy with property prices and think it's uniquely a US problem, whereas the system in the US actually works decently well compared to a lot of places. (It would take many essays for me to list all the flaws, I'm not saying it's perfect I'm just looking at it relatively speaking).

[fortedoesnthack]

You should search based on Tokyo 23-wards or vs the greater metropolitan area. Most people when they refer to Tokyo are referring to the 23 wards.

In that case the numbers are far worse.