Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

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Japan is the classical example where they have national zoning rules permitting residential development in each zone. You can get a place in downtown Tokyo for like $300K USD. [1]

> While the cost of housing is climbing in many global cities, the average middle-class family in Tokyo can still afford to buy a new, single-family detached home for $300,000. That’s right. The typical Tokyo starter home is a brand new three-bedroom.

Their national zoning rules allow supply to meet demand without city-level meddling. Houses there sell for roughly the cost of construction.

The reason housing is so nuts in SF is because the city added half as many new houses as required to meet demand over the last say 30 years. [2]

[1] https://archive.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-esta...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

The 300k in the article is the size of the loan, not the cost of a typical house.

That's still a dream in Vancouver. I wish I could do that here.

However, that Tokyo 3BR is much smaller than anything you'd find in the US. The average house (not apartment) size in Tokyo is 91 sqm, or under 1000 sqft.

That sounds, fwiw, roughly in line with SF or NY 3br apartments. [1] By the way, that's actually part of the value proposition. New houses in the US are twice as big as they were in the 1970s - while costing the same per square foot on an inflation adjusted basis. This means 3br houses are 2x as expensive now as they were back then and is part of the reason folks are priced out of the market entirely. This is also a zoning issue.

We need small 3br houses and apartments. That doesn't mean we can't also have large 3br houses.

[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/139-Steiner-St-3-San-Fran...

Japan is a terrible example. It has near-zero immigration. Its population is now falling is the same as it was 30 years ago. In the 80s it had the highest most unaffordable prices in the world.

I'm not sure any of that is relevant, especially immigration. All it means is that supply is roughly in line with demand. Nothing more, nothing less. When supply is in line with demand, the cost of housing approaches the cost of construction.

Tokyo didn't have near-zero immigration for most of the last 70 years. It's a great example.

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