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.