Tokyo proves that housing shortages are a political choice

https://www.citymetric.com/fabric/tokyo-proves-housing-shortages-are-political-choice-4623

by sampo • 7 years ago

363 209 7 years ago

thefounder• 7 years ago

The difference here is that London has a lot of foreign and domestic real estate "investors" that I'm pretty sure won't be happy with affordable housing for everyone.

Who wants London's property market to crash?

TaylorAlexander2• 7 years ago

“Who wants London's property market to crash?”

People who value housing as a place to sleep rather than a financial investment.

Aeolun7• 7 years ago

This should be about 100% of the voters right?

dublinben• 7 years ago

Current owners of scarce real estate wouldn't lose money if zoning laws were changed to allow more density. The land they own would actually become more valuable, as it could now have more units than before. Allowing more productive use of the underlying land is actually good for both the sellers and buyers of housing.

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

London now has more renters than owner-occupiers, so the answer is, most of London's inhabitants want property prices to decrease. This would make their rent more affordable and give them a better shot at transitioning from renter to owner (which is a goal of many).

tehjoker2• 7 years ago

Just a reminder that land is a limited natural resource that does not have a monetary value assigned to it except by political choice.

We could assign zero dollar value to land and allocate it democratically based on utility to the public and with an eye to preserving the environment. Allowing a market in land doesn't allocate it to the best uses (why do we have fancy hotels on the best real estate when there are homeless people?), just to the purposes of the people with the most money. If the people that own the construction equipment refuse to build when land is worth less, the public should step in and do it.

For the liberals out there, if we did this a certain person would not be president and the country would be a better, more egalitarian place. Imagine having nearly everything you pay in rent back in your pocket instead of being progressively squeezed more and more each year and spied on (given the increasing installation of monitoring equipment that you do not control).

If we could ban owning properties that you do not personally use, imagine how that would change the composition of cities. Gentrification would be vastly reduced. Shops, community centers, and other things that people love wouldn't get kicked out of town because the rent always increases.

That would be revolutionary.

Aeolun7• 7 years ago

democratically based on utility to the public

Ok, so I want to live in the center of the city, because there the walking distance is shorter.

John wants to do the same thing, but he gets assigned a tiny plot somewhere miles outside the center.

How will you make value judgements about people in this manner? You cannot assign randomly either, as everyone will hate the place they live.

geofft5• 7 years ago

There are lots of ways to do it, but yes, whatever you do, you have to make that value judgment. I have trouble believing that the value judgment "Your parents were richer than John's parents" is anywhere near the top of the list of reasonable approaches. (I have real trouble believing that the value judgment "Your grandparents shared a race with the politically powerful, who refused to sell to John's grandparents" or "Your great-grandparents shot John's great-grandparents in the face" are anywhere except right at the bottom.)

TaylorAlexander2• 7 years ago

We could just make value judgments on people based on how much money they have.

/snark.

Really to be serious I would say that your concern is valid, but we shouldn’t be comparing this idea to perfection, because today we certainly don’t have perfection. Yes you are right that determining who gets housing is nontrivial. But who said collaborating across society was simple? Abstracting it all away to markets is far from ideal, don’t dismiss other proposals simply because they may not be easy.

karamazov• 7 years ago

Do you not consider yourself a liberal? You’re proposing a socialist redistribution of land, which is far to the left of any major political party.

(I’m pointing out an inconsistency in your political labeling, not commenting on your suggestion.)

azernik• 7 years ago

"Liberal" means center-left (ie into free markets). In European discourse "liberal" parties are centrists, and US socialists use the term exclusively to refer to centrists Democrats.

claudiawerner• 7 years ago

The left movement since even before Marx was generally very critical of liberalism - that is, the political philosophy based on the concept of rights (in theory rights conferred to all humans but in practice only very rarely so), property rights, and the idea that the only valid way to make changes in society is to vote.

Somehow the term "liberal" in the US (though also in some other parts of the world) came to be associated with progressives, who are yet still usually differentiated from the Socialists and other "far left" ideologies. Most of the academic socialist, communist, radical feminist and anarchist work is strongly critical of liberalism, even its metaphysics and epistemology.

Indeed, Marx himself started (if his early texts are anything to go by) as a liberal in that sense. The key turning point for him was his critique of liberalism in his On The Jewish Question. From SEP:

Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings who are a threat to our liberty and security. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. Accordingly, insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways that undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation.

jtr1• 7 years ago

Real socialists very much distinguish themselves from liberals. If the labeling seems inconsistent, it's likely because the spectrum of American politics is so narrow the two get collapsed into each other. Socialist politics have been in a state of almost total collapse over the past 50 years, and most Americans are unfamiliar with its main tenets.

Having spent a bit of time trying to understand this band of the spectrum, here's my very rough mental model. Regarding economics, you can think of the left continuum as moving roughly from liberal -> progressive -> social democrat -> socialist -> communist.

* Liberals pretty much favor what you might call free markets, with some regulations against the worst excesses (pollution, fraud, etc).

* Progressives tend to favor a more Keynesian approach, with the government stepping in to try and tone down the amplitude of the boom/bust cycle, pursuing aggressive antitrust action, etc (think Elizabeth Warren).

* Social Democrats believe that capitalism fundamentally produces inequality, but also wealth, so to maintain social cohesion, markets have to be balanced with a strong welfare state, or safety nets (Sanders circa present day probably fits here).

* Socialists believe that capitalism is an inherently exploitative distribution of _ownership_ where an elite social class owns most of the necessities like housing, hospitals, factories, etc.[1] Socialists believe that that ownership is the result of workers being forced into a bad deal: having to sell their labor in exchange for access to those necessities, and that the remedy is for those workers to unite to wrest those necessities back from the owning class.

* Communists accept the same principles as socialists, but believe that the end goal for politics should be a society where all resources are collectively owned and distributed on the basis of need. Authoritarian communists believe that a strong centralized government is needed to make this happen (think Stalin or Mao), and that once the redistribution happens, that government will fade out of necessity. On the other hand, libertarian communists (also known as anarchists) believe that centralizing state power will only reproduce the exploitation of a capitalism under different owners.

[1] Not all socialists oppose markets, some think they're great, but that individual firms should be collectively owned by their employees, rather than external shareholders.

tehjoker2• 7 years ago

This is a bit late. I was rhetorically appealing to liberals but consider myself a socialist if that helps.

solidsnack90004• 7 years ago

We could assign zero dollar value to land and allocate it democratically based on utility to the public...

How is central allocation according to some metric actually democratic?

Just a reminder that land is a limited natural resource that does not have a monetary value assigned to it except by political choice.

Land's value is nominally derived from the income it can generate. In the Wealth of Nations, Smith walks us through the connection between the price of farm land and the value of the crops that could be grown on it.

petre• 7 years ago

Why ban? In Switzerland you pay the same amount of property tax if you rent, live in or keep your property empty. The tax is adjusted every six months with the medium rent values.

vorg• 7 years ago

Once upon a time in the West only property-owners could vote in national elections. Then they changed the law to give all citizens (over 18) the vote, regardless of whether they owned property or not. They should have changed the law so all citizens owned the property they lived in -- and thus given the vote to every citizen that way.

hackermailman• 7 years ago

Japanese also don't consider housing to be equity or investment, it depreciates in value every year. A house is just a house not something to speculate on or store money in. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-land/japan-...

itsaidpens• 7 years ago

This very nearly almost made me aroused. What a wonderful idea.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

I ranted about this concept recently when I went to buy my family a house. I can't believe it exists somewhere.

dev_dull• 7 years ago

Even before you mix in build-friendly government policies, Japan has had decades long population decline and extremely difficult immigration process.

This is literally the opposite of the major US cities which have seen the most housing inflation. Nothing is built and everybody is moving in.

Barrin92• 7 years ago

as the article points out, there is significant net migration to Tokyo both from the country itself and from abroad, which makes the situation indeed comparable. I seriously wonder if people here even bother to at least skim the article.

In fact Tokyo has grown significantly faster than New York or Los Angeles over the last fifteen years. (population up by about 1.2 million compared to 500k respectively).

zizee• 7 years ago

I believe this is partly a cultural artifact of Japan being earthquake prone. The severity and frequency of earthquakes used to make it difficult to build housing that would last.

0xB31B1B• 7 years ago

Do you have any evidence to back this up?

My sources say that this is a long held artifact of the shinto belief system and culture. This is a clumsy way to state this but they essentially that houses accumulate spirits over time and become “haunted”. Old dwellings are valued less because they are “dirtied” or “burdened” with an accumulated cruft of spiritual... somethingness. Haunting here isn’t a literal translation but it’s the best I can do in a short time. It’s kind of how Marie Kondos whole schitck is about treating your things as if they have “personness” or “the quality and dignity of being actively present and deserving of respect”.

kgwgk• 7 years ago

There was a monster real estate bubble in the eighties (prices tripled), I think earthquakes were also a risk back then.

jrockway• 7 years ago

This is what my friends who own houses in Tokyo tell me. Homes are bought with the assumption that they will be destroyed before the loan is up and that the bank will pay it off. This doesn't really make sense to me because there have been big earthquakes in Japan in my lifetime, and there isn't a massive housing crisis while every structure in the country is being rebuilt. So I don't fully understand this logic. But unlike the other comments replying to you, I can confirm that I've heard this many times.

My understanding is that while people in the US pay for housing with 15 or 30 year mortgages... in Japan the 100 year term is the most common. I am not sure if this has any effect on the market, but people certainly don't think "when I grow old, I'll have this big nest egg locked up in home equity". The bank owned the house when they were born, and it owns it when they die.

bamboozled• 7 years ago

It's not that hey won't last exactly, but more that regulations have improved since the mid 90's and revised in 2004, so newer buildings are considered to be safer.

It's actually something people talk about when looking at renting a new apartment.

fiblye2• 7 years ago

People are downvoting you, but everyone I know here in Japan has told me this.

It's not that they're planning for complete annihilation from a massive earthquake, but there's bound to be some wear and tear when a relatively large one strikes every few years. Compound that with the absurd humidity and mold problem endemic to pretty much all of coastal Asia (trying to keep your house mold-free is a losing battle after a certain point and it's unavoidable) and the cost and effort of repairs far outweighs the ease of just tearing it down and rebuilding.

In the west, a 20 year old house is considered brand new. In Japan, 20 years old is bordering on junk territory. 30 years is junk and not worth the effort of repairs. You can search online and find 40 year old houses basically selling for pocket change since they're basically considered moldy death traps on the verge of collapse.

Now, though, Western-style homes built to withstand earthquakes are becoming common and they're expected to be a slightly better investment. How these houses fair against mold is something I'm not sure of.

A commenter below mentioned spirits accumulating in a house, but I've never heard of such a thing and it reeks of mysterious orientalism. But most people won't buy a house that someone committed suicide in or was murdered in. "Jikenya" (incident homes) are marked as such and sell for drastically reduced prices, if they can sell them at all.

jayd16• 7 years ago

I've heard the Japanese do not like "used" houses but I've never hear about the earthquake angle.

Tuna-Fish• 7 years ago

The way this is achieved is by making sure that there is never a housing shortage, by building enough to keep the prices low.

It's never an investment because prices never appreciate, so no-one would even try to invest in it.

sanxiyn• 7 years ago

You can still do this even if you already made a mistake. Remember Japan had an extreme real estate bubble in 1980s.

throw0101a9• 7 years ago

Sure, the "house" depreciates, but what about the land / dirt?

This is what I always find interesting in real estate, especially in the pricey areas: we use the mental shortcut of saying "I bought an expensive house".

No, you didn't, you bought expensive land. If you "bought a house" for $3M, the structure itself would probably take <$500K to rebuild if it's <3000 sq. ft. (300 m^2): the rest of the money went to dirt ownership.

geebee• 7 years ago

Has this always been the case? I remember hearing way back in the 80s various (and probably hyperbolic) stories about how the dollar value of the land in greater Tokyo was greater than the dollar value of the all the land in the entire United States, how if you dropped a $10,000 bill in Tokyo it would be worth less than the land it covered, that sort of thing.

It's possible for land to be valuable and worth owning while buildings are not viewed as investments. I'm not convinced that SF owners of single family properties would necessarily be financially harmed by a major relaxation of density restrictions. It's entirely possible that the value of living space per square foot could go down while the value of land per sq foot goes up.

harisenbon• 7 years ago

You are 100% correct. Land is valuable, houses & buildings are not.

The small house on my land has decreased to the point where I pay less than $100 a year in taxes on it.

The land that it's on has increased by around 30x in the last 50 years.

seanmcdirmid4• 7 years ago

Japan went through a huge multi decade housing bust after the 80s, which brought down much of the USA/Canadian west coast with it for 5 or so years in the early/mid 90s.

zzzzzzzza• 7 years ago

check out princes of the yen for an explanation of japan's housing bubble (and a lot more).

ohyes• 7 years ago

The value of the land would go through the roof. Houses would absolutely be getting torn down to build high density apartments.

There is more to it than monetary considerations however, communities will be destroyed, the feelings and romantic notions people have about the area will be stepped on.

mc32• 7 years ago

Not sure how much impact leasehold vs freehold has on appreciation/depreciation but I think many appt buildings in Japan are build on leaseholds.

avodonosov• 7 years ago

Here on HN was an article about Japanese economy growth (nominal) several decades ago, because companies were investing in real estate, which was constantly increasing in cost.

In short, search for "Japanese housing bubble".

throw0101a9• 7 years ago

You're not wrong, but why is this the case?

One hypothesis I heard was that building codes changed quite regularly, especially with regards to earthquakes, and therefore people often wanted the latest designs. So when they built houses, they didn't spend as much effort because they knew after a few decades they'd be completely torn down:

This scrap-and-build approach is a quirk of the Japanese housing market that can be explained variously by low-quality construction to quickly meet demand after the second world war, repeated building code revisions to improve earthquake resilience and a cycle of poor maintenance due to the lack of any incentive to make homes marketable for resale.

* https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...

* https://www.rethinktokyo.com/2018/06/06/depreciate-limited-l...

In North America, I believe we also do some mental gymnastics: we say that houses are expensive, but what's actually pricey is the dirt. It's just that we tend not to completely demolish structures: to the point that even if someone completely guts a house, replacing (e.g.) >75% of materials, we psychologically still call it an "old house" even though most of the structure except the frame is new (see Ship of Theseus).

acchow• 7 years ago

especially with regards to earthquakes, and therefore people often wanted the latest designs. So when they built houses, they didn't spend as much effort because they knew after a few decades they'd be completely torn down

That only explains the structure itself. But an empty, small lot of land (only big enough for one home) with no structure at all (or an abandoned, worthless structure) can be worth well over $1M in america.

WWLink• 7 years ago

To be fair, tract houses are usually built poorly and don't age well. The 1960s tract house I currently rent is hot garbage and it would be better/safer to tear it down and rebuild, than it would to fix it up.

_0w8t• 7 years ago

Friend of mine said that before moving to US he always thought that scenes in Hollywood movies about guys and girls punching and kicking through the walls were totally ridiculous. After living in Seattle for a while he no longer thinks so. The walls are indeed much thinner than in Europe. He supposed that this was due to earthquakes. What was the point to make home heavier/more robust if it still is not enough to protect against strong earthquakes while making evacuation harder? That and the culture that prefers to rebuild from scratch rather than maintaining older things leads to houses that are only good for 30-40 years...

euske• 7 years ago

Traditionally, all Japanese buildings were made of wood, probably due to the abundance of materials (75% of the land is still forest even today). But wooden houses didn't last long because of its monsoon climate with a lot of rainfall (things get rotten). And then, there's an earthquake. People tend to think that materials are transient and fragile, and the modern housing system in Japan might have reflected this collective belief.

zamfi• 7 years ago

One piece missing in this analysis is construction cost: between permitting, regulations, unions, and Other Unknown Factors™, it can cost 2x as much to build the same structure in the USA compared with elsewhere.

If construction is cheap, sure, tear down the old and build anew. But if it costs more to build a house than buy the same house (yay SF Bay Area!) you’d be crazy to do this now.

kimmeld• 7 years ago

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/03/15/w...

ddebernardy2• 7 years ago

That claim seems dubious. I'd suggest it is rather because Japan is still licking its wounds in the aftermath of the late 1980s real estate bubble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

https://japanpropertycentral.com/2018/08/japan-property-pric...

BurningFrog5• 7 years ago

If it's been 30+ years, it's probably time to stop thinking of it as a temporary thing.

fulafel• 7 years ago

I suppose the Japan speciality is that this happens even in big cities?

Generally this nature of housing is taken for granted in places all over the world. Most townas and cities are not fast-growing.

sbenitoj• 7 years ago

It’s amazing that this even needs to be published — no study is needed to prove the laws of supply and demand that have been known and obvious for centuries.

klyrs2• 7 years ago

In the neighboring cities of Vancouver, the "known and obvious" laws are false. We have developers building skyscrapers full of condos which are selling for 500k-2M for a 1 bedroom. They're largely vacant because they're bought as investment properties. The ultra-rich can afford these places, but don't need to sleep in them. The demand isn't just people who need a place to stay, and rental prices are absurdly high.

We've got a new tax in Vancouver that's helping: the empty homes tax. But that's only Vancouver and not the outlying area.

asdfasgasdgasdg2• 7 years ago

They aren't false. There just hasn't been sufficient building allowed to take up the slack. If Vancouver took a page from Wizards of the Coast's tactics, prices would eventually go down. Namely: you have to convince speculators that you are willing to build (issue cards) until the value of speculative assets falls to the livable price for everyone else. If they were willing to allow unlimited building until the prices fell to the desired level, eventually speculators would realize that Vancouver property is a terrible bet.

Actually the presence of these investors is just a reflection of Vancouver's own unwillingness to allow said amount of building. If the speculators thought there was any chance of them building enough to meet demand, they would no longer view housing in Vancouver as a safe investment. So it's really a self-inflicted wound, not a violation of the laws of supply and demand.

That being said, an empty home tax does not seem like a bad supplemental approach. However, even assuming the tax is perfectly effective, if the population inflows outpace building, prices will continue to rise. And I would guess that is likely to be the case. The tax is a band-aid, but the problem needs stitches and cyanoacrylate.

WillPostForFood• 7 years ago

Tokyo proves you need tremendous investment in infrastructure, not just unleashing developers to build without restriction.

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

Most (if not all?) of the transit in Tokyo is private. When you build densely enough, transit becomes highly profitable on its own, and someone will do it.

njepa6• 7 years ago

They are private in ways specific to Japan that, what I know, you pretty much won't find anywhere else.

thatfrenchguy• 7 years ago

Operated privately is very different from built privately.

BurningFrog5• 7 years ago

As I understand it, developers are quite free to build with minimal restrictions in Tokyo.

It's of course not the only thing you need for a healthy city. But it's a great start!

ShorsHammer3• 7 years ago

From what I've seen if you build the infrastructure it doesn't change residents attitude to increased density. Actually makes them more opposed as they now have very good public services compared to elsewhere and they don't want to lose it.

It's a chicken and egg problem.

lovemenot• 7 years ago

Not mentioned in the article, but also significant is that in the last decade or so, commercial property developers have been required to provide housing too.

We can see many successful examples of mixed-use buildings in predominantly commercial districts such as Shinjuku and Roppongi.

Danieru• 7 years ago

That is not a requirement but rather an innovation first done by Mori Tower about thirty years ago.

Most large sky scrappers are still pure office towers. The mixed use developments are rare and lifestyle branded.

burlesona• 7 years ago

What Japan’s inexpensive homes and its alternative policy approach prove is that the housing shortage in British cities is not inevitable. Housing does not have to be expensive in prosperous cities. The housing shortage is something we have chosen to experience and can choose to change if we want to.

Written for Britain, but this could be applied universally.

njepa6• 7 years ago

It is also meaningless. Yes, if you get to choose what to do, you can do whatever you want. But you don't, so affordable housing remains an unsolved issue in most places. Things haven't changed and aren't changing just because people become convinced otherwise.

cheriot2• 7 years ago

There's a lot of people (in the US at least) that see appreciating property values as inevitable. Combined with views associating dense housing with urban ghettos from the 80s, it's one of the reasons people think building more houses won't make them more affordable.

andy_ppp2• 7 years ago

I really hate this trope that is wheeled out about Japanese accomodation; the flats that people talk about would be considered too small to live in by western standards. Most of them seem to be made of horrendous cheap plastic prefab; you get a corridor with a kitchen in it, a mezzanine to sleep on above said corridor that is too small to sit upright, a 7'x'7 living area and a bathroom (including toilet) that is about 2ft x 2ft.

For this delight there are people being charged $1000 per month or more in rent.

Add in the fact that Japanese have an extremely different relationship to property culterally (and due to earth quake fears) means propeerties are often knocked down and rebuilt (the article notes this - 600000 new homes for an ageing population seems like most of those are going to immigrants).

A lot of people in Europe prefer the shared living, and it is better use of resources - you only need one bathroom/one living room per 3 people and those can be MUCH nicer than these micro appartments.

London and the west also have different cultural values about building high rise property and overlooking neighbours. It's fine that Japan doesn't mind a sky scraper being built overshadowing their homes but for Londoners or elsewhere this is simply unacceptable to suggest we can change our whole culture to Japanese values and magically solve housing problems.

JumpCrisscross2• 7 years ago

London and the west also have different cultural values

That’s the article’s point. Housing shortages are a political choice.

c0nfused• 7 years ago

I think it's not quite as vigorous in opposition as that. The argument is more that housing shortages are a result of how we in the west regulate construction and housing leasing to under supply.

I'm not a Londoner, but my american city of about 1 million people has more than 60 different residential zonings. My home can be a single family home, a day care, or a coffee shop with up to 2 employees who reside off the property itself. Additionally, the house is in a historic district and no changes to the exterior may be made that are visible from the alley or street can be made with out approval by the city via application and subsequent public forum.

I can see how this would strangle growth of housing supply as the place grows.

nihonde3• 7 years ago

On the other hand, there are virtually zero homeless people in Japan (certainly outside Tokyo) while they are seemingly everywhere in every Western city...so perhaps the quality of the bathroom accommodations aren’t really the point. I think you’re closer when you talk about cultural attitudes to “home”, but I’m not referring to some hokey ancient wisdom of the Far East.

The fact is that it’s perfectly fine, even normal, to live in a “one room” in Japan. No one is going to shame you for it.

I actually think some one-room apartments are super cozy, and feel like nice dorms.

If you consider sento/public baths, you’ve got your shared public resources.

seanmcdirmid4• 7 years ago

Uh, there are plenty of homeless in Tokyo, they do keep it tidier I guess. There are also homeless in Osaka and Nagoya. I assume other big cities have homeless, but I’ve only been to (and seen them) in these three cities.

strken2• 7 years ago

I wish that regulators would stop assuming that "cultural values" are more important to me than paying half as much rent, and that I shouldn't be allowed to live in a cheap studio with a built in mezzanine.

andy_ppp2• 7 years ago

They aren't, there are no regulations on this. I hope you get what you wish for.

ShorsHammer3• 7 years ago

I've said this repeatedly about Sydney, plenty of people would live in capsule homes given the chance. For a lot of people in the inner city you don't actually spend that much time at home besides sleeping.

Local landowners would lose their minds though.

momokoko• 7 years ago

Not to mention that the US Dollar and the UK Pound are much more attractive for foreign investment than the Japanese Yen. We can easily measure this by comparing Japanese bond demand with that of the US, UK and Europe. Not to mention that Japan is not currently an attractive place for Chinese investment for reasons I will not go into here.

Real estate is going up due to foreign investment. We are watching in real time as the slowdown in China is showing a direct correlation with west coast US and west coast Canadian real estate markets cooling. Buffalo, NY, and many other rust belt cities, have seen significant increases in housing prices while their populations decrease rapidly.

I second how boring listening to the trope about Japanese real estate prices when it has nothing to do with attitudes towards building. North Dakota has little to no zoning restrictions and we certainly don't see those prices staying in reasonable amounts.

It is so obviously false to anyone even remotely involved in investment or real estate, that I sometimes wonder if there is some kind of agenda that pushes this nonsense outside of your typical internet obsessive ideologies.

SECProto• 7 years ago

the flats that people talk about would be considered too small to live in by western standards. Most of them seem to be made of horrendous cheap plastic prefab; you get a corridor with a kitchen in it, a mezzanine to sleep on above said corridor that is too small to sit upright, a 7'x'7 living area and a bathroom (including toilet) that is about 2ft x 2ft.

What are you talking about? That sounds like the kind of accommodation so rare that it gets articles written [1] for being so innovative. Apartments in Japan are small, but I have never seen one like that except on the internet, or in Hong Kong.

As a counterpoint, the typical small single occupant housing I saw in Japan had the following characteristics: solid concrete construction, a narrow kitchen (double burner with fish broiler, sink, counter, rice cooker, and microwave, with cupboards above and below), a small living room plus a small tatami bedroom to the side (though these spaces likely aren't separate in denser cities), a closet-sized toilet room, and a larger room with bath.

So yes, they are certainly smaller than anything you find in most western countries - but that is because zoning makes it illegal.

{1} https://www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/tiny-tokyo-apartment/

osdiab2• 7 years ago

For a real-life anecdote, last year I lived in Tokyo in a 6 jo apartment (tatami bed + living room around 110 sq ft + about equal size bathroom and kitchen), and my rent 40 minutes by train from Shibuya station and 15 minutes from Kichijoji (#1 most livable Tokyo neighborhood) was around $430/mo.

I have also heard that prefab is really common - in fact just walking around Tokyo it does look like there's a ton of prefab houses. That said I've toured around some and been inside some, and they were very comfortable, more so than my current rickety San Francisco apartment and similarly to brand new NYC ones I've been in - so I don't consider them lower quality than what I typically see in American cities just because they're prefab. Rather it's far more efficient and that keeps costs down.

There is something to be said about traditional Japanese living being more space-efficient - folding out your futon means that you don't have to have separate permanent bedrooms, dining rooms etc like a Western apartment would have, which allows for you to have a decent living in ~220 sq ft like I did - but if you want to live like a Westerner, you will have to pay up for that, and I do hear that Western style apartments are more popular these days.

After living in San Francisco, I felt like I had hit the jackpot, but as it turns out that's just "normal" in a functioning city.

njepa6• 7 years ago

I never understood this argument. Japan is one of the most different places relative to everywhere else. That you can't find a more familiar example almost becomes a counter argument. There is something about housing markets that makes people feel like their city is somehow unique and if they could just fix their local problem everything would be great. While pretty much every in demand major city in the world is having the same problems.

BurningFrog5• 7 years ago

In a less exotic location, Houston proves the same.

pascalxus• 7 years ago

Houston and Chicago put the bay area to shame with populations over 2 million, high growth and super cost effective housing. The secret is no zoning laws in Houston

seanmcdirmid4• 7 years ago

Topography also plays a role, Houston and Chicago can grow outward forever, something that pesky hills and water get in the way of in the Bay Area.

elgenie• 7 years ago

Houston does, however, rely on the taxpayers in the rest of the country to underwrite their many many housing units built in a floodplain.

dhfromkorea2• 7 years ago

I am not convinced. The attribution to the simple zoning system is surely not a complete proof, if any. Consider a counter-example: South Korea that has a very similar zoning system. Yet the housing price around Seoul soared roughly by 60% the past 3 years---so did rents (to a smaller but still significant rate). All the while the apartments supply has been at record high in 10 years. That zoning policy may be a factor but clearly not sufficient.

cheriot2• 7 years ago

All the while the apartments supply has been at record high in 10 years.

Has the number of jobs increased? Housing needs to be built in proportion to office/factory/commercial space in order to balance supply and demand.

dhfromkorea2• 7 years ago

The employment rate has increased by somewhat unnoticeable amount over the past 10 years [1]. The increased housing supply is mostly due to cost factors (tax breaks from the previous administrations, low interest rate) and the demand due to decline of small cities (demand gets concentrated around Seoul, the capital city; people buy houses around Seoul while living far away in another place on rent). As for the office/factory/commercial space, there has been a sharp increase in supply, and the vacancy rate (spaces that cannot find tenants) is 10-20% in major cities. Folks still buy buildings with a yield of 2.5-4% because the interest rate is so low. I am currently based in Cambridge, Boston. There are empty stores that have been looking for tenants for more than a year.

[1] http://www.index.go.kr/unify/idx-info.do?idxCd=4013

b212• 7 years ago

How the heck can they deliver so many flats? Poland with 30% of Japan’s population builds roughly 5 times less houses per year and trust me we’re building new blocks literally everywhere. Yet flats are getting much more expensive every year, it’s cheaper for Londoners to buy flats in London than for Poles to get something in Warsaw. I guess what works for Japan won’t work for European Union as folks from Germany, the UK or France can buy Greek, Bulgarian or Polish flats easily...

jaredklewis• 7 years ago

How the heck can they deliver so many flats?
...
I guess what works for Japan won’t work for European Union as folks from Germany, the UK or France can buy Greek, Bulgarian or Polish flats easily...

This confuses me. Af first, you are impressed by the fast rate of construction in Japan and affordable prices in Tokyo. From there, it seems reasonable to speculate that if Poland increased residential construction to be more in line with that of Japan (proportional to population), Poland might also see a reduction in prices.

But you instead immediately jump to the conclusion that it wouldn't work because Poland is in Europe. Japan's system works well enough with a population of 125 million. Any particular reason it couldn't scale to support the 500 million in Europe?

If foreigners are eager to buy up Polish housing, this is only a problem if Polish housing is scarce. If instead, Poland increases construction until it has a surplus of housing, housing becomes just another export that can be sold at a profit, injecting money into the Polish economy.

So why wouldn't it be in Poland's interest to follow the Japanese model?

Tharkun• 7 years ago

Japanese flats usually don't have central heating. They tend to have a/c in one room. The kitchen is usually tiny by western standards. Often there is no bedroom -- the living room is used for sleeping. In all, 20-30m² flats are pretty common.

This is, of course, a lot cheaper to build than 100m² flats with two bedrooms, central heating and a kitchen bigger than most Japanese restaurants.

You can't (or rather, propbably don't want) tiny flats unless you live in a city like Tokyo. Where you can find 24/7 convenience stores everywhere, where there's affordable and tasty food to be found everywhere and at almost any time, where public transport is amazing and affordable. Hell, you don't even need a bath in Japan, as there are public baths everywhere.

TL;DR invest in your city and smaller, more affordable housing becomes possible and desirable. If you don't, it'll start to feel like USSR housing really quickly.

purplezooey• 7 years ago

Look at this. From the article it says Tokyo started 110,000 houses annually per year since 2003.

Population of Tokyo: ~9M.

Population of the Bay Area: ~7M.

The BA starts around 11,500 houses per year. Roughly similar in population -- a tenth of the housing being built. Wtf.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

because it is wholly under the domain of politics in the Bay Area. Most if not all special interest groups are linked back to either those in office or their party. the usual method is to form groups where you friends and family get nice part time advisement jobs pulling down 100k or more; we recently had a candidate in my state who part timed a get out to vote PAC for even more.

There have been many stories posted here and elsewhere how nearly every attempt to build housing is derailed, usually under the guise of setting aside for "affordable housing", followed by union workers only, followed by environmental concern; one was defeated for adding a few hours of shade to twenty percent of a play area/park of a school!; to finally architectural concerns because why would we want to impose on history of buildings barely a hundred years old. It comes down to money for politicians and those already there not wanting "those people" living among them.

Heck in my local metro area they have squads to clear out the homeless and undesirables every time a convention or big game comes in; a town which has been blue for most all this century and most of the previous. One where you will hear the politicians stamp their feet about how unfair it is and if only they had more power and money they could fix it, yet they never have. Instead a new stadium displaced an older black church, go figure.

codedokode3• 7 years ago

to finally architectural concerns because why would we want to impose on history of buildings barely a hundred years old.

On the other hand, why do people need to build a new, ugly modern high-rise buildings in historical parts of the city? Is there not enough of other land?

Historical parts better stay historical forever and there should be no new buildings, I think. Because no tourist will ever come to see modern, ugly concrete buildings.

ezconnect• 7 years ago

They built many houses because they also demolishes lots of houses.

presentation• 7 years ago

While I'm totally in favor of what you're saying - it could be that the article means greater Tokyo and not just the central part of Tokyo (to bring the comparison similar to the Bay Area one), which would amount to more like 39 million population - it's a much much much larger city than the San Francisco Bay Area.

But I would believe the number if they really do just mean central Tokyo housing starts, that seems like a reasonable number. And that would make it potentially even more embarrassing for SF.

kmlx• 7 years ago

just to put things in context: greater tokyo area is 38 million, the largest urban economy in the world.

myrandomcomment2• 7 years ago

The population of Tokyo proper is 13.8M and the metro area (think Bay Area SF to San Jose) is 38.1M. I lived in Tokyo and have been back around 100 times over the last 10 years, most recently last week. SF does not even register as a city to my way of thinking.

codedokode3• 7 years ago

I am surprised to read that houses in Japan are "inexpensive". They are very expensive, as is everything in Japan. Also I think there might be differences because the climate is relatively warm, the houses don't have central heating, which reduces the costs.

The prices in London are high probably because there are lot of rich people, lot of immigrants and therefore high demand for housing.

joshdance• 7 years ago

and those who live in London doesn't allow enough houses to be build to lower the cost?

sgt1014• 7 years ago

The planning laws and social/physical infrastructure mitigate against initiatives and changes that would reduce the costs. One fundamental is that the rail gauge in the UK was the first one created, and this meant that tunnels and bridges were built unambitiously, consequentially there are no double decker trains in the UK. If there were double decker trains on the London commute lines London accommodation prices would be significantly reduced (I believe). That's just one small example of the complex confluence of issues that have driven the market in one direction though.

Everyone should remember that 60 years ago London housing was very poor as well as relatively expensive (although far more attainable). That's important as it shows that things can and will change over time in the market. We need to think about this because some of the reforms suggested will fundamentally alter the physical geography of the city in ways that will have consequences 100's of years into the future. Architects and planners have a very bad track record with respect to these alterations, for example see Birmingham, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Reading in contrast to Manchester, Brighton and Bristol where history has run differently (Bath is a really good story - the 60's got stopped in its tracks there).

sgt1014• 7 years ago

Think speak in the article :"Tokyo reformed its green belt twice" in fact Tokyo did not reform its green belt, it abandoned it.

Also, yes, it is good if single people can make the choice to live independently, but a far larger problem in my mind is that families are driven either into poverty or out of London. The reform that I would seek is that apartments should have three bedrooms, this would create desirable family homes as well as flexible share candidates.

lopmotr• 7 years ago

What makes you think the market won't provide those 3 bedroom apartments? Why should those details be dictated? Isn't the the whole problem causing housing shortages in the first place - local government deciding how much luxury everybody must have, no matter how much they don't want it? Whenever there's a housing shortage, people start wanting to impose even more restrictions instead of allowing the people living there to drive the market with what they really want.

sgt1014• 7 years ago

The market is providing 2 beds (one big, one small) because these are acceptable to young professional couples. When babies come (which is often what happens) then the apartment works for a short time, but then confronts the couple with a challenge. The second bed is inadequate, and if the babies are of different sexes then the law dictates that they can't share the room past 9(?) years old.

This causes the couple to seek a house (there are no 3 bed apartments) houses are very inefficient in terms of footprint, and affordability means that most young couples end up commuting.

Government has a role because developers just building things mean that the costs of the development are unanticipated and then later socialised as collateral damage. On the other hand if government manages development then the appropriate stock with appropriate infrastructure (doctors, schools, shops, transport) can be provided at the time and the cost socialised in the transaction and managed. This is economically much more efficient.

sytelus• 7 years ago

This is bit overblown article. Certainly bad zoning laws can help inflate prices and there are several other factors like investors using real-estate for investment. However the major cause of real-estate price increase over long term is plain and simple: heavy urbanization of entire world. If you look at graph of population moving to urban centers over centuries it looks like literally almost vertical line in recent decades [1]. I'd heard that 90% of Earth's population is concentrated around just 40 urban centers! The real-estate in rural area has remained same or took nose dive while in urban areas it keeps going up.

Interesting question is how fat this trend will keep going? My guess is that this is black-hole effect, a larger city attracts even larger population towards it. Japan has recently became outlier because of economic issue as well as population decline.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization

Udik• 7 years ago

I loved the beginning of a recent article on Japan on the London Review of Books:

"One can fly to Japan from anywhere, but from Japan one can only fly to the Third World, and it hardly matters whether one lands in Kinshasa, London, New York or Zurich: they are all places where one must be constantly watchful and distrustful, where one cannot leave a suitcase unattended even for ten minutes, where women strolling home through town at 3 a.m. are deemed imprudent, where the universal business model is not to underpromise and overdeliver but if anything the other way round, where city streets are clogged at rush hour because municipal authorities mysteriously fail to provide ubiquitous, fast and comfortable public transport, where shops need watchful staff or cameras against thieving customers, and where one cannot even get beer and liquor from vending machines that require no protection from vandalism."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n07/edward-luttwak/friendly-relati...

If it's true, it sounds like there are a lot of "political choices" going in on in Japan that are completely unknown to the rest of the world.

csomar• 7 years ago

I was in Tokyo last month. I think the city is under-estimated and not getting the praise that it deserves. It is true that you get less square meters in Tokyo, but the Japanese makes it up by quality, utility and accessibility.

Quality: Having stayed in relatively cheap locations, you get much better quality (especially clean) comparing to what you'd get if you were in New York, Hong Kong or "Paris".

Technology: Japanese care about technology and convenience. Toilets and showers are one example. Being able to store your luggage in several stations. Automated doors for practically any store. Small details that add up.

Accessible: There is a great transit system that makes the whole place very accessible. Even the most remote places are still accessible by train. The train stations are not the most modern in the world but at least smell good enough.

magnetic• 7 years ago

Why did you use double quotes around Paris?

rb808• 7 years ago

If you restricted London to 1% foreign born people you wouldn't see a housing shortage either - currently 37% of London's population was born outside of the country. The article quickly dismissed that political choice, but it seems more relevant to me.

Being an immigrant myself I'm not anti-immigrant, but it is important for things like housing policy.

ramraj07• 7 years ago

So you think Tokyo is less than 1% foreign born?

myrandomcomment2• 7 years ago

486K as of 2017. So around ~3%

http://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Foreign_Population_by_Nat...

pacifika• 7 years ago

Uk is not London

amai• 7 years ago

The number of houses built is not the best metric. How many square meters of housing are build every year?

crimsonalucard• 7 years ago

Kind of unrelated but also relevant. What is it like working as a software engineer in Japan vs. say San Francisco? How's the pay? The stress?

San Francisco is a filthy city but would are software engineers happier in that city or would they be in Tokyo?

Tokyo proves that housing shortages are a political choice

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