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Comment by o_m | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't a shrinking population make housing more affordable, which makes it easier to start a family

Japan already has a lot of semi-abandoned older properties that you can buy comparatively cheaply but the cost of bringing them up to modern standards is prohibitive due to regulation as I understand it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/realestate/japan-empty-ho...

Outside of central Tokyo housing is already quite affordable.

Ok but a third of the population lives in tokyo and that number is only going up

Only if you believe in the supply-demand theory of housing bubbles. Japan hasn't yet made it easy enough to use housing costs to transfer wealth from the working class to the landlord class, whereas the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand have made continual increases in house prices their only consistent domestic priority.

>Japan hasn't yet made it easy enough to use housing costs to transfer wealth from the working class to the landlord class, whereas the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand have made continual increases in house prices their only consistent domestic priority.

A depressing realisation. Western governments can't seem to plan for a long-term, multi-decade strategy anymore. But they are consistent in policies of inflating asset prices by any tools available.

Wouldn’t say it’s governments, but unfortunately homeowners (which is the majority of the population in some of these, like Canada) can’t afford their house price to go down. Quite a significant amount of them rely on it as their retirement plan (sell, downsize, retire). These people will perpetually vote for people who won’t allow house prices to go down (which, kinda makes sense — “voting for your own good”).

Japan has a public pension program, and having fewer young workers paying into this will definitely pose a challenge.

In Japan a property is not seen as an investment so it cost almost nothing compared to US/Europe.

Yes, there are many Japanese properties that can be purchased for a song. Many of these homes are located in rural areas though and may need extensive renovations or repairs.

By that metric so do Europe and the US. It's "property near where the decent jobs and society are" that's expensive.

I watched a program about a couple that bought a "1€" house in Italy. Long story short, by the time the house was in a liveable state they'd spent around 100k, and the village they were living in had virtually nothing to offer in the way of shops or services and everything was a 45 minute drive away. They eventually put the house on the marker for less than they'd spent on it.

You don’t want a house, that wasn’t maintained 2-3 decades. Because old people do not care anymore and don’t have resources for optional maintenance. There must be a choice made: starting a family or starting long and expensive construction.

the main constraint isn't the walls but the land it's built on.

The young will be too busy taking care of the old once it reaches a 1:1 ratio of worker:retiree.

If you have fewer people to pay pensions for the elderly, you will have to raise taxes. No ?

Or borrow more or cut pensions or sell off public assets. Lots of options, although all have some drawbacks.

Or lower pensions

Probably only if more properties are left vacant due to people dying from old age than those that are wrecked in coastal areas by rising seas due to climate change.

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