People bet 10 x their yearly income on a property, and then they will do anything in their power to make that value rise, or at least not fall: NIMBYism. They will block any effort that potentially lowers the value of their property.
And I don't think you can blame them, as we can't expect them to voluntarily lose a lot of money.
Not to mention, the incredible 30 year fixed mortgage.
For additional context, there is very lax enforcement of home building standards for anything single family, both to encourage new construction and because the general principle is it will be torn down in 20-30 years, so why bother. This is of course also leads to a bit of a vicious cycle (which some see as wasteful) where it’s safer to tear down and build new because who knows how whatever you’re buying was built.
I have been living in Japan for the last 5 years, and the construction quality is absolutely abysmal here. Thermal and noise insulation is almost non-existant (very funny here in Aomori), and the overall layout of the cities and the houses is a complete mess.
I read recently that the government passed a new law forcing higher construction quality standards, but let's see what happens...
This is a myth. There's tons of demand for housing in Tokyo, and other large cities. There's no demand in small, remote towns, and the population is moving from rural areas to the big cities, plus there's more immigration, so demand hasn't fallen.
Oddly enough, according to this: https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/how-affordable-is-... homes in the US are still more affordable than those in Japan.
I only did a quick search and clicked on the first result, btw, so take that with a boulder of salt.
I actually spent a significant part of my early career working with real estate economists.
A bunch of economists I know actually lost money fixing their mortgages in 2008. They fixed at too high a rate and weren't prepared for the low interest rates environment.
It's a direct consequence of NEPA privatising environmental review together with our lack of tort reform.