[keiferski]

I watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.

I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.

[brandall10]

It's hard to compare to the US as a big part of this is the very weak yen.

I spent a couple years traveling the world and punctuated my travels with a 2 week stop in Japan (Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto) in May '24. I was not prepared for how inexpensive everything was... much less than several eastern European cities I had just come from, more on par with places like Mexico City.

[mitthrowaway2]

It was still very affordable in 2009 - 2014 when the yen was not weak.

[crooked-v]

Part of that is that Japan actually builds housing, while literally every major US metro area has a massive self-inflicted shortage of housing (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...).

[ForHackernews]

https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...

> Here is a startling fact: in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).

[brianwawok]

Houses in Europe are made to last 200 years. I know traditional rural Japan houses get used for 30-40 years and torn down. So can’t just go on housing starts, would need to go on delta of total units. As houses get torn down, replacing is expanding.

[shagmin]

Think I've heard anecdotes about Tokyo being pretty affordable as well. Quick search shows less than 1/3 of income typically spent on housing, which is much better than major US cities.

[gabriel-uribe]

Yep. Counterintuitively, housing in Japan depreciates unlike most of the world

[torginus]

Most land is leased rather than owned - which means it depreciates over time. Imo it's a sensible system 70-100 year old buildings often have issues like Aluminum wiring, lead pipes, or asbestos, and can be in generally such a sorry state that renovating them costs more.

Also building a house or apt building that can stand for 100 years is very different from one that stands forever, for example steel beams can be used as foundation instead of having to pour concrete

[kylehotchkiss]

Housing built with pine 2x4s really _should_ depreciate especially in termite/earthquake regions like CA, but doesn't seem like that'll ever happen.

[BirdieNZ]

It does depreciate, usually. It's the land underneath that appreciates in value.

Occasionally if you get unusual spikes in building materials and labour costs then the house itself can appreciate in value because it costs more to replace it, but that's rare enough.

[zubiaur]

Wonder how it is like in other countries with shrinking populations. Say, Korea.

Intuitively, it would make sense for housing prices to decrease when the demand decreases, supply being equal (It's not like housing deteriorates significantly in the short term).

[gabriel-uribe]

Not sure about Korea, but Japan's case is more interesting than simply adjusting for population: the government strongly incentivizes new buildings every few decades. There is also a culture of viewing housing as a consumable, which is the part that sticks out to me the most.

[red-iron-pine]

yeah there is an expectation that you're either building a shrine type building (in that it's gonna be built to last and venerated) that will be there for 300 years, or else you're gonna replace it in <30.

that also leads to a lot of experimentation in architecture, since this building ain't gonna last so get weird. downside is it leads to a prefab corner cutting approach.

my brother lived in japan for a while and he loved it, both the long-standing rural places that were legit old school, but also when he was in the city and sublet some hypermodern, querky places on the cheap.

[jacobr1]

Demand for the big cities is still increasing pretty much everywhere, even if some countries are seeing net decrease in demand on the whole. Also remember that supply deteriorates. The number of "ready to move into" homes can decrease over time without maintenance and rebuilds.

[bobthepanda]

Japan is a bit of an outlier because of earthquake regulations.

There is a history of substantially updating building regulations every time a new record is set for largest earthquake in the modern era; and so if you are buying historical, you are buying a less safe property that could kill you.

The last major earthquake updates to the code were in 2000, so there isn’t a lot of historical housing stock without this confounding factor.

[mitthrowaway2]

Seems like this should be a net cost adder. Yet even new builds are quite affordable.

[jjmarr]

Japan has stigma towards used houses.

[bamboozled]

Tokyo is massive, you can literally be living rural and still be in Tokyo. Could be an hour or more commute till you get into the metro area.

Not all of Tokyo is nice either. They also probably won’t rent to “outsiders” without giving any explanation so…

[taeric]

I mean... You are looking at a place that is about 250 square feet? There isn't an appetite for offering units that small in the US.

[keiferski]

I don’t agree at all — plenty of college students, 20-30s somethings would love a space like this in NYC, SF, etc. at a lower price point than what’s currently available.

The limits seem to be from legal restrictions on minimum apartment size, not market demand.

[taeric]

Apologies, on that I agree. What we don't seem to have, is a willingness to build and offer these places.

That is, I was specifically saying there is a lack of appetite to offer these. Not that there is lack of appetite to buy/rent them.

[gabriel-uribe]

I think so too. I'm an early 30s that would love to pay a fraction of the current market rates for a Tokyo-sized unit in SF.

[taeric]

When I was younger, this was only doable in larger US cities if you had roommates. And was quite common in that scenario.

Doesn't change that it would be nice to have such offerings without having to navigate all of the extra stuff that comes from having roommates.

[hylaride]

The building codes in most jurisdictions wouldn't even allow such a thing, whether there would be demand for it or not. But the lengths people are willing to go for small apartments in top tier cities (NYC, especially) show that there is be demand in the right situations. Of course, the whole point of living in Manhattan is to not spend time at home.

But there are interesting experiments going on. Where I live (Toronto) has had a huge build-out of small ~4-500sqf bachelors that were hoovered up by flippers and mom-n-pop landlords. At the peak of the boom, they were selling for ridiculous prices ($800K+) and the poor build quality of everything from elevators (of which there often weren't enough, resulting in lineups and long waits) to water pipes that burst meant that savvy prospective owners stay clear.

There's a correction happening, but people don't want to unload their "investments" at below what they cost and since mortgages are recourse people can't just walk away.

In theory there should be demand for these units from the young, corporate owners, 2nd homes in the city, etc. But the prices have just not come down enough to make any of those worthwhile.

[taeric]

Right, I should have been clear that my assertion was not that there is lack of demand. My assertion is we don't build and offer this style. Outside of school dormitories. And even then, there is still a preference for bigger.

Would love to see more on the correction you are referencing. So much of the discourse I see focusing on "starter homes." Which, these are not that.

[hylaride]

There's a relatively expansive article here: https://financialpost.com/feature/toronto-condo-correction-f...

Also: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxq32zzq8eo

[taeric]

Thanks! And yeah, I knew a few markets were tanking. I was hoping there was evidence that people were starting to offer SRO style places.

Alas, I think there is such a heavy anti-landlord attitude around that nobody wants to be said landlord. Worse, towns don't like having apartment complexes. Worse still, we don't do anything to incentivize moving back to these neighborhoods for the people that do move away to work.

[nikanj]

In BC, the government bought all the unsold, unfit units to prop up the housing market. Your tax dollars at work!