Not Japan, fwiw. Japan has been very reasonable for real estate for decades. We're now seeing inflation in major metro areas but outside of that, it's very reasonable.

My understanding is that japanese houses are fundamentally different in that they are designed to be expendable in the long term, similar to cars. You don't buy a high quality house that you maintain, you buy or build a new house and then tear it down a few decades later.

Aren't US houses the same effectively? - Not necessarily in that they aren't built to last, but that they'll be rebuilt regardless in a couple decades.

Literally a couple decades like 20 years? I just don't think that could be true, at least not where I live.

Looking at the listings in a broad radius around me, there is still a lot of housing built in the 1960s and 1970s being bought and sold quite regularly, and some stuff even older. A house built in 2004 ("a couple decades") would absolutely not be worth the cost to rebuild.

I would suggest that the UK is also similar.

It's just that we don't do it because of housing shortages, or the ever popular terraced housing, and people live in some of the worst states.

The vast majority of houses aren't rebuilt with any regularity in the US. The extreme high-end McMansions are commonly rebuilt, but that's an outlier. Much of the affordable housing is the luxury apartments of 40-80 years ago.

I'm curious where in the US you're from, or where you've seen that. Florida coast? In the cities I've lived, most of the houses were built right after WW2 (80 years ago), and in some older neighborhoods, most of the houses date to the victorian age. I can't even imagine someone doing a teardown on one built within the "last couple decades" (i.e. built in the 2000s).

The inflation is mostly because of the devaluation of the yen compared to the USD, mostly because the BOJ refuses to raise interest rates.

There is some real estate inflation in very desirable parts of the biggest cities because of foreign investment, but I'd say it's limited. There's still lots of new construction going on, though it's slowing due to labor shortages. The foreign investment can only go so far: real estate isn't a great investment here because structures depreciate rapidly, and it's relatively easy to build new housing just about anywhere if you own the land.

It's only somewhat worth it?

Japan has reasonable real estate and yet around 10% is in Tokyo proper, nearly 30% in the greater metropolis. Less than half own their homes.

This study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026427512... from 2023 shows that they're suffering similar issues of intergenerational wealth transfer when it comes to owning homes, specifically if your parents don't help you - you're unlikely to be able to get on the ladder.

There are a ton of homes that are not claimed but purchasing them, their value, the land value are all - as you know - quite different from the US/AUS/India where the value goes up. Different from the UK where you own the home, but lease the land etc.

People in Japan don't feel the need to own their own homes that much. Apartment rents are generally reasonable, and there's constantly new apartments being built so there's lots of competition. Tenant protection law is also pretty strong so landlords can't mistreat tenants as badly as in other places.

>There are a ton of homes that are not claimed

Those are in rural places with dwindling populations, where no one wants to live any more.

>Different from the UK where you own the home, but lease the land etc.

In general it's only flats (apartments) that are leasehold, the majority of houses are freehold.

Japan also suffers from severe population decline (I think it has been declining for 15 years straight). Aka the old guard let their assets go the hard way.

Maybe it's population decline instead of severe population increase beyond what society can sustain. It's like the infinite economical growth didn't account for finite resources.

Always wondered what happens to housing in countries that rapidly depopulate. Like, Latvia losing 1/3 of its population, or Japan losing 4 million in 10 years. So they now have much fewer people for the same housing supply? Does it all just get abandoned?

Yes. Country side or old industrial downs die out with properties will have negative value. While prices in places like capital regions can be unsustainable. In Finland this is happening. Thankfully other growing or sustainable large cities still have somewhat reasonable prices outside most central core.

Yes mostly the small villages get abandoned and life concentrated in the cities.

So it does not help the housing problem all that much - sure there are now houses available in the countryside but no one wants to move there.

But there isn't a major housing problem in the cities at all: there's lots of housing, and lots of new construction for new housing, keeping prices in check. The problem everywhere else is that people don't want to build housing, and that factor doesn't apply in Japan. Here, if you can buy the land, you can basically build whateverTF you want on it. So in desirable places, big real estate companies like Mitsui Fudosan buy up land and build apartment blocks or tower mansions on them, and in farther-out (less dense) places old houses are routinely demolished and replaced with new ones. There's no worry about NIMBYs keeping you from building.

The population in Tokyo and other desirable cities is rising, not falling. The population is falling in small towns and rural areas where no one wants to live any more.

Imagine being outraged your grandparents managed to actually retire in a forum that very nearly worships a couple of guys that could purchase Utah. I'd consider reviewing the holdings of the 780ish billionaires currently residing in the US before declaring a generational issue.

Jeff Bezos owning 10% of Amazon really has nothing to do with the massive issue of entrenched institutional NIMBYism.

San Francisco built 74 new units of housing last year. Not 74,000. Seventy four. We could kill all billionaires and housing would not get cheaper in a world like that.

Fortunately there is only one San Francisco and countless other Not San Fanciscos. That is a highly unique, cherry-picked case.

>From 2014 to 2018, for example, Santa Monica issued permits to build just 12 multifamily units. [1]

1. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/11/santa-monicas-b...

Exactly: the billionaires aren't the problem here, it's the middle-class NIMBY homeowners who refuse to allow any new construction near them.

At what point do you just call that illegal cartel behavior?

When they've captured the local government, you don't.

Middle-class NIMBY homeowners have literally zero meaningful input into zoning and permitting processes. At the absolute peak of their power they can show up to public hearings and whinge into a microphone for 3 minutes, an activity that planning boards and city councils around the country are perfectly happy to ignore.

If city councils and planning boards ignore them, they promptly get voted out of office. The NIMBYs are more reliable voters than anyone else.

That's a heartwarming narrative that bears no resemblance to observed reality. Frequently these positions are either totally uncontested or a straight party line vote by individuals who have literally no idea who or what they're voting for beyond party affiliation. What actually happens: council ignores the shit out of the noise coming from individuals that don't actually fund their campaigns, their affiliated party, or both. Entire projects are reframed as notionally beneficial to the community at large, citing some combination of bullshit claims about economic benefits and inclusivity, something something gentrification bad, etc, and the larger voting populace shrugs and goes on with their day oblivious. Worst case scenario a seat or two get sacrificed and the party apparatus advances another foot soldier to fill in the now vacated seat, with identical results.

Ok let’s entertain this idea that the billionaires are the core of the problem. Total wealth of 800 billionaires is around $7T. The housing real estate market in the US (not counting commercial) is around $50T.

So I guess they play a role but even if we erased them we would still be in the same spot.

I'm not as convinced. A quick glance at the numbers doesn't factor for the outsized influence oligarch-class real estate developers have on legislative processes. Consider the frequency with which the state legislature here signs off on infrastructure and beach replenishment projects that explicitly and solely service the most expensive coastal development projects in the state. They've literally greenlit coastal overdevelopment to the point that the bulk of the state's shellfish industry has gone bankrupt as once-viable commercial beds have become inundated with surface and septic tank runoff to the point they are no longer safe for human consumption. This in the face of decades of protests by middle and working class folks on the coast. Then there's the billions of dollars worth of public funds that have been tossed at the same developers for "mixed use" urban high-rises in all of the largest cities in the state. Without exception these projects were billed as targeting the housing crisis to generate positive column inches. The actual net result is three quarters of a million dollar condos, rent and property prices downtown tripling over the course of 18 months, and a massive wave of local businesses filing for bankruptcy in the face of unsustainable rent increases, all of which has exacerbated the problems it was claimed were being addressed. Lastly there's the rash of 300+ unit suburban hellscape subdivisions that are popping up like mushrooms in what was once quiet rural corners of the county. I am absolutely dead-ass certain that 100% of the existing residents of those areas would have had those projects halted in the planning phase if they had any way to do so.

We need very big changes to capitalism at its core.

There are warning signs flashing across all economies without any coherent solutions.

Wouldn’t you just change your economic system if you need to change the core for its fundamental flaws playing out as expected?

Maybe, but so far we've been pretty successful in just adding patches/bandaids to capitalism to address the places where it falls on it's face. For example, healthcare doesn't fit into a "free market" model, and most countries have figured that out. Even the US, which imposes lots and lots of regulation and protections in healthcare.

Housing, too, could get similar treatment.

I think we could do with governments actively trying to stabilize the value of assets like housing and maybe equities like they do with currencies. They could make a profit doing so as well but selling high and buying low.

It might lead one to think that there is one underlying cause of the problem.

Read Henry George's book PROGRESS AND POVERTY to learn what it is, and his remedy for it.