Those prices seem weird. They were buying entire care homes and hotels for less than the price of a car? I understand they come with obligations, but these businesses were apparently financially ok before the acquisition.
You may be familiar with the "akiya" phenomenon, where empty houses in the Japanese countryside are sold for a song. The same applies not just to residential homes, but to other buildings as well, and their price tag is very low for the same reason: the property has serious issues and/or has been vacant for years, and will require far more than the initial investment to make habitable.
Here's a fascinating blog post by someone who went poking around the ruins of one hot spring town (Kinugawa) that went through a particularly dramatic boom and bust cycle: https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/983/
This particular hotel at least appears to have been open until fairly recently, but Google reviews describe the "Showa-era" furnishings (read: 1980s at best), and it's on the fairly grim slate grey Kujukurihama beach 3.5 hours from Tokyo by train: https://maps.app.goo.gl/G53KWyCsmeUy8JyR9
Maybe not thriving but they were paying salaries and bills before they were bought. They were not in a bankrupt state.
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But then how does it quickly get resold at 40x?
Because the new "owners" are buying the Business Manager visa, not the actual property.
I was thinking the same thing. In many parts of the world, even a failing / debt laden business would be worth much more than that.
Good location being the key here
I doubt a house the price of a new car qualifies as being in a good location.
Tokyo on the other hand… yeah I doubt you would see anything cheaper than couple million dollars there
The average apartment cost in Tokyo is a little north of $400k (USD), since the year 2000 or so the value of Tokyo apartments has appreciated somewhere around 3% per year. Apartment prices are ALMOST back to where they were in 1989.
You mean when Japan was in an epic price bubble (ie: the imperial palace land alone was worth more than all of California) which was followed by decades of economic stagnation? I'd guess that has impacted their view on real estate to a somewhat unique degree in the world.
Still, it is twice as expensive per square meter as my European capital city. So looking at it without any historical data it is still much more expensive even with declining population and no immigration.
More like an exception to the rule really as it really has unique conditions as opposed to rest of the world.