Why Japan Is Crazy About Housing
archdaily.com
archdaily.com
One of the primary reasons houses depreciate in value so rapidly in Japan is simply because that is the accounting rules. If you look at http://www1.m-net.ne.jp/k-web/genkasyokyaku/genka-tatemono.h... (and I hope Google Translate translates it well), you see that the typical wooden houses (the kinds you see in California, where I live) depreciate competely in just 20 years in the eyes of tax agency. This has real effect on mortgage.
The rules around the market are different, too. For example, in California most houses are sold and bought as-is. In Japan, the seller is on the hook for up to an year for problems that weren't discovered at the point of sale.
These differences depress the existing house market, and that is made up by the new house market, which in turn translates into a lot more new houses.
I find this report from Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism highly educational. It comes with lots of numbers: http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001002572.pdf more
I find this fascinating: "The rules around the market are different, too. For example, in California most houses are sold and bought as-is. In Japan, the seller is on the hook for up to an year for problems that weren't discovered at the point of sale."
In California there are many rules, permits, and processes that must be followed before building a new house. This comes from voters (residents) seeking to limit the rate of change in their neighborhood, and restrict change they would find objectionable (like multi-floor houses in a neighbor with all single floor houses). So buying an existing house is always "easier" than building a new one. Buyers are not responsible for any problems that were disclosed at the time of purchase and signed off on by the buyers. The buyer has the option (and should) to get a thorough home inspection prior to the purchase.
Contrast that to Las Vegas were my I spent my formative years where new houses were the norm and 'old' houses were depreciating because why buy an 'old' house when a 'new' one was the same price? This continued for a long time and pretty much covered the valley floor there with very similar looking houses. That has slowed some now that land to build on is quite far away from the rest of town. But I could see that tearing down houses on land closer to town and rebuilding them might improve the value of those houses.
The bottom line for me is that clearly municipal regulation has a lot more influence on home 'value' than a nominally open market would suggest. I always knew it had a some effect but it seems possible that it is perhaps the dominant effect.
Additionally the used home that I did buy would be illegal to build today (as the house is nearly double the size of what is allowed on the lot by current zoning).
Having actually done an modification with a permit (installing a new furnace in the exact same place as the old one), I can see why every contracter I talked to said "don't bother with permits" It took about a dozen visits and they rechecked everything each time.
The cost of this particular permit was minimal ($500 US) but I spent so much time driving back-and-forth and waiting on inspectors &ct. that the hassle outweighed the dollar cost.
This article also conflates the 'average' and the 'architecture' (as seen on arch daily) which is very much atypical.Though even with the average there is a stronger actual interest in space than in the west (probably due to actual exposure of average people to different spaces). For instance, I remember looking at the website of a mass house-builder in Japan and the big item being advertised was a 1.5m (approx.) half-height 'nook' space in your living room. This would never happen in the west (most people would think 'whatever would I use that for?'.
Unfortunately it isn't quite as easy to ship old Japanese houses overseas...
I found a few general-information sites which suggest this or similar reasons, but cannot find a definitive source.
It's actually surprisingly fascinating. He also has some interesting videos on the recycling culture in Japan including videos of open air recycling centers full of perfectly working appliances.
1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZfoMTPXZXE&list=SPE0D149A2A5...
And after 50~60 years there is a major overhaul of most buildings that could cost the same amount as just scrapping and rebuilding everything (which is the prefered solution). It may seems short compared to other countries' building repair schedules, but earthquake resisting buildings are build with very different norms, like more "moving" or bending parts, possibly flexible pipes which won't last as long as other rigid materials, elevators which will cost a lot more to maintain that basic ones, etc.
Also as years go by architects are better at designing resisting buildings, and after 30 years there is a gap in the materials and technology used, which can justify a hefty premium on new buildings.
[1] http://japanpropertycentral.com/2013/08/large-scale-repairs-...
I recommend Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons for a more detailed discussion of real estate and zoning laws in Japan.
> In Japan, the seller is on the hook for up to an year for problems that weren't discovered at the point of sale.
Actually, it's 5 years in Japan now. My contractor just had to do a complete re-wallpapering of my house because the paper suddenly split.
This is an absolutely amazing 1st world country with 3rd world construction practices. I blame it on several factors:
1. Cheap and scammy construction companies that try to maximize their profit margin by using cheap materials and poor building practices.
2. People who don't know any better. Most Japanese people assume that what they get is standard and fair.
3. The pervasive Japanese mindset that everything is disposable, replaceable and ephemeral. In Japan, little value is generally placed on long term value of things.
The house where I grew up in Europe is built like a castle compared to even some of the best houses I've seen here.
If this doesn't sound crazy enough, there are a lot of carbon monoxide related deaths every winter in Japan because many people (especially elderly people) use an ancient heating system called /kotatsu/, where they burn coal under a small table that's covered with a blanket. My girlfriend once got burnt badly because she fell asleep under her kotatsu and accidentally touched the heater. Don't get me started on electric blankets and similar nonsense, which is all over the place.
This in part also explains why tearing down a house and building a new one is desired, as you would want the most modern earthquake proof property.
I haven't lived in a place in Japan that wasn't double glazed and central heating is not really required since most of the year heating is not required (at least in Tokyo).
Without trying to sound 'patronizing', you sound a bit like a foreigner who hasn't yet fully adapted to Japan.
What you generally will see is an aversion to unreinforced masonry construction -- stone or brick. Where you do see these they've generally been substantially reinforced with either internal or external metal skeletons (or you live in a region with poor building codes and the structures were erected since the last big temblor).
I'd suspect that Japanese construction methods follows engineering to some extent, but is also strongly influenced by tradition.
No one (basically) who is involved in earthquake engineering would ever use the term 'earthquake-proof' to describe one building, much less an entire country's construction practices. Instead, we generally design buildings to not require any repair after earthquakes which occur more frequently than once per century, and design buildings not to fall down after earthquakes which occur more frequently than once per 2500 years. There is always a chance that an earthquake will occur outside of those limits, and nothing is designed to withstand those.
While you are correct in assuming that adding weight to a structure (all things being equal) will increase the seismic forces it experiences, the contribution of sound insulation to the weight of the building is pretty insignificant. And for lightweight structures it is much easier to increase their strength than to decrease their weight.
Third, earthquake resistant 'technology' [re: design practices] is not as ever-changing as you might think. While there are some examples of innovative solutions like putting water tanks at the top of skyscrapers, for low-rise structures there really isn't that much to it. If you take a 100 year old house, screw some plywood sheets between the floors, and bolt it to the foundation, then it will be 90% (estimated) as safe as a brand new house. Earthquake resistance is not so much about technology, and is more about making very sure that all of the force generated in the house can make it to the ground without breaking anything (though physicists would say that the force goes in the other direction from the ground to the structure). This means that earthquake safety is fairly proportional to the amount of time and money spent on construction, which is very much not incentivized by disposable construction.
It is very true that there is a somewhat different conception of what housing should be like, with Japanese housing being relatively small, compact, and lightweight (though there are those heavy tile roofs on more traditional houses...). The concept of "insulation" seems to be rather unknown in Japan, which is a real shame given their energy issues (I don't know the amount to which home heating contributes to energy usage though).
I think it's a mistake, though, to conflate all this with with a lack of quality, or to dismiss the cultural differences. Granted, if you, as a European, are trying to find housing, you're going to want what you want, not what the average Japanese wants, but your post does have a whiff of condescension about it ("These poor Japanese, how ignorant they are of our superior European practices!").
[I'll note that in my experience living in Japan, it's much quieter than urban living in the U.S., despite the higher densities and relative lack of insulation, simply because people take more care to not be obnoxious. There's some noise but it's more likely to be quiet conversation on the balcony next door, or children laughing as they play, and not so much douchebag-practicing-his-electric-bass-at-3am. The urban U.S. is noisy.]
I once visited a fairly wealthy Japanese family who had a big, newly built (and very cool) house in the countryside. It was a fairly cold windy winter's day when I visited, but the whole family was sitting in a small room with multiple glass doors to the outside wide open, with the wind blowing in, huddled around a portable electric heater watching TV...
I also totally disagree with your dismissal of the kotatsu; it's a fantastic invention (right up there with bathtubs you can easily completely immerse yourself in, with a friend), and there's very little more cozy and wonderful than snuggling up under a kotatsu on a cold winter's evening.... also, cats love kotatsus!! :] [and heating an insulated 0.5m^3 space is a lot more efficient than heating a whole house!]
I am a bass player and I sometimes have to use in-ear-monitoring to stop going deaf, and it isn't the same as hearing the sound from the speaker, particularly if you are counting on the response of the amplifier + speaker combination for sound. Try telling an electric guitarist to use headphones - half of the sound they get is from the combination of amplifier and speaker and the interaction between the two (amplifier sag, speaker cabinet resonance, angle of speakers etc.)
I'm sure most of us could stand to be more considerate of our neighbors, but I'd prefer if soundproofing became common enough that we didn't really have to.
Headphones are alternative solution to receive the sound with a pile of sacrifices, with the only advantage - not disturbing neigbhours. That is not a lie, you can feel the sound.
I actually understand your point of view, but I have a strong belief it is culture influenced (see side story).
If you want to save up, go for paper-thin walls. Some, like me, would rather pay extra for the comfort.
Side story: I spent my childhood in late soviet constructed building. These had impressively thick walls inbetween rooms and flats. Sadly not sound insulated, but by a degree better of what I have seen in UK so far.
Being a music lover, I would listen to a high quality (even had some of the rare DVD-Audio disks) on East EU-acceptable/West EU-loud volume every evening.
In a contrast, last five years I have been living in UK. Fully detached houses are heavily rare, people love to save money and go for semi-detached houses with thin walls. Being polite, the best I can hope for is watch movies with just enough volume to recognise the speech. In my hometown, I could get close to cinema (sound wise) experience without stepping out of home.
You would ask why I do not watch movies in headphones?
1. As mentioned earlier, low frequency soundwaves are received by the body, not ears.
2. That would be an awkward experienced watching a movie with (girl)friends, everyone wearing headphones.
3. Comfort of not having a piece of technology attached to your body.
4. I was exposed to a greater quality sound already.
England would be a hell, if everyone had loud speakers and used them at night. So, I am thankful and respectful to english-men prefering headphones.
However, regarding the lack of central heating in Japanese dwellings, I think that's a true cultural difference between Japan and America. It's strange for an American to wake up in a cold room or have to turn on the heat (or AC in summer) when we move into the bedroom after dinner--but it's equally strange to a Japanese person when they see we're heating an entire American house 24 hours/day. It some ways they're right: when the entire family is in one room watching TV or using computers, why should you waste energy heating the entire rest of the house when you could just heat one room--or even just heat up 6 or so cubic feet of space underneath a kotatsu or electric blanket?
> If this doesn't sound crazy enough, there are a lot of carbon monoxide related deaths every winter in Japan because many people (especially elderly people) use an ancient heating system called /kotatsu/, where they burn coal under a small table that's covered with a blanket.
Umm.. Kotatsu do not produce Carbon Monoxide. They're usually electric, and you're the first foreigner I've ever seen who has complained about them. (I love them, my wife hates them because once inside, I never leave)
Carbon monoxide poisoning usually comes from eldery in older house where they use kerosene heaters (touyu) for heating. Almost all kerosene heaters have a 3-hour timer though, so it is a little safer than you make out.
I think part of it may also be that the construction companies form a strong political lobby.
Peeling wallpaper is not going to affect the structural integrity of your house.
Older houses did not have insulation, but insulation has been the norm for a while. I've moved several times in the Tokyo area and the apartment I've had that had thin walls was an olden wooden building that's about 40 years old now. And I'm not living in expensive places either.
Heck, my truck is 25 years old, I've had it for 20 years, costs me about $300/yr in maintenance, insurance is cheap (no collision), no worries about somebody stealing or damaging it, and I go out on a frosty morning, turn the key, and it starts right up.
I don't feel any urge to replace it with a new one.
http://followrory.blogspot.com/2013/06/shaken-car-inspection...
My 40 year old Dodge now qualifies for "collector plates" where, for a one time fee, I never have to pay the annual registration fee again.
And, of course, there is quite an industry in the US providing repair/maintenance parts for those old machines for far less money than parts for new cars. It's really quite nice if you like having those cars.
* Well, technically I could import it for "display purposes", but it could not be registered for road use.
The front bumper requirement explains why American cars don't look as svelte as their european equivalents.
What they look like: http://www.carinsurancecomparison.com/car-insurance-rates-fo...
Which motor do you have?
When you said "1972 Dodge" I hoped it was something with a little more oomph than a slant-6 :-)
They were right, and I'm pretty happy with it.
I dislike chrome plate and billet engine dress-up stuff, I got all go and no show parts. (And a few whoa upgrades.)
Don't get too excited at some of the crazy prices. They don't include shipping costs and none of the cheap cars will be street-legal in Europe or North America.
Have you followed the sorry debacle of Abe's third arrow? Any policy initiative that threatens a vested interest eventually gets overturned.
Car manufacturers did up their safety game over the last decades. My daily drive is also a car of a certain age, and that's the only doubt I have about it ...
This article had that effect on me, but it also made me angry; taking it at face value, it shows that salarymen have it even worse than I thought :(
They do get interesting architecture out of it, but that's hardly a good trade off for geographic permanence and a lack of financial movement... Or is it? It's hard to grok other cultures, despite my best efforts. Maybe it is worth it to them?
One thing seems to be certain across cultures: no one is happy and everything sucks ;)
Many people, even Americans, see things the opposite way. They don't like the idea of having to move far away from their parents to find a decent job, or have to uproot their families at the drop of a hat when a job ends.
I grew up in D.C., went to college and worked in Atlanta, went to graduate school in Chicago, got a job after in New York. My wife grew up in Oregon, went to college in Iowa, worked in Chicago and D.C., went to graduate school in Chicago.[1] Now we work in Wilmington and Philadelphia, and next year we're moving to Baltimore. This is the nature of the modern American economy, where you move around to find opportunities, but unless you're a single childless early 20-something it makes the rest of life very logistically complicated. Certainly among my friends, who are getting into their 30's, long-distance relationships are quite common and nobody is really thrilled about them.
[1] In comparison, my wife's parents grew up in the same city and went to high school together, less than 50 miles from where her dad's family settled during the wagon trail days.
Curious if you know married couples who have to be apart and how this affects their marriage? When both husband and wife have specialized jobs, it seems the choices are to compromise on one person's career or too live apart for at least some periods of time.
But yeah, the constant tension compromising one person's career or living apart for substantial periods of time. This is especially true as competition becomes more national. 10 years ago I would've said that someone from Pennsylvania would be crazy to go to Stanford over CMU or Penn, assuming they wanted to work on the east coast. But today I probably wouldn't say that.
There's a name for this, which I first heard in academia, regarding couples who both hold a Ph.D.: "the two-body problem". It was usually applied when both sought academic jobs, but the concept applies to any sufficiently specialized hiring criteria. Pretty much all the solutions and compromises that you might imagine can and do happen. Being apart is pretty strenuous on a relationship, but some folks manage it for a time. Sometimes universities or other employers will hire both on simply in order to get a star candidate. Some manage to "solve" the problem -- landing satisfactory co-located positions on their own merits.
And as an adult, many of my peers who grew up in economic centers like NYC and the SF Bay Area were able to stick around, regardless of profession.
As someone who lives in a property that's over 140 years old, which has been fully renovated, modernised, and improved (at a guess) maybe 10 times over its life I find the idea of housing as a disposable assets rather alien. Granted, there are no earthquakes here.
I wonder what the social and economic trade off is between maintaining and modernising a building for hundreds of years (considering energy efficiency and standard of living too) vs just knocking it down and building a new one every 30 years.
The article doesn't mention the effect this has on the rental market - If the asset depreciates I can't imagine being a landlord is a very lucrative proposition?
That's not necessarily the case. Traditionally, landlords make money on 1) cash flow from tenant rents and 2) appreciation of the property at the eventual exit. In Japan, it seems like 2) is out of the equation, but if 1) is high enough, owning rental properties could be very lucrative for landlords, especially if there's high demand for rental properties. Detroit is a market that's experiencing an increase in rental properties even though appreciation is practically nothing in most areas.
Because it doesn't. Home technology evolves so slowly, that the analogous situation in the tech world would be if you could simply upgrade the memory and hard drive on your 286 to be able to use the latest and greatest software.
Mineral wool commercial production started in 1871 in Germany, and asbestos started being used as insulation material in the 1860s in North America.
Those drafts are a godsend in the summer, homes without drafts or AC turn into solar ovens.
(Other properties of old homes, like high ceilings, also contribute to livability in the summer (at the expense of being more expensive to heat during the winter))
So basically you have a seemingly balanced tradeoff; do you want to waste energy in the summer, or in the winter? Of course the tradeoff is not really balanced, you can put on more clothing in the winter so long as you keep your home above 0C (for the pipes), but you can only take off so much clothing in the summer.
Houses designed to stay cool without AC, among other things, tend to have more intelligent window placement, and windows that open much wider than is perhaps normal (you won't find those rubbish casement windows that only crank open to an acute angle in homes designed to stay cool without AC: http://www.choicesil.com/images/House1-16-08%20017.jpg).
Given the option of staying in a house that never had AC, or a house with broken AC, I would chose the former every time. Fans and open windows will help in either case, but they will be more effective in the home that prioritized that usecase.
No, the real reason is the delta between a tiny but valuable home and junk in 30 years is not that high because construction is cheap due to climate and the time value of money eat's what little value might be there. For most people they get most of there value from simply living in the house.
PS: US, also spends a lot of our GDP on housing construction we just value the land vs home differently because of cultural reasons and construction materials. Despite the demonstration from the rust belt that it's mostly the land that's valuable not cheap homes. aka location location location
Also, the bay area isn't nearly as geologically active as the Kanto region. If San Francisco had earthquakes of the frequency and scale of Tokyo, hardly any low-rise in the city would last more than 30 years.
PS: I stayed at a a 100 year old farm house made by complete Amateurs and built on over time where some of the floors and trim sloped more than 5 degrees which is vary noticeable to the naked eye. Yet it had decent insulation, every door opened freely and most windows opened just fine. It took a few people a few weekends to get it there, but vary little cash. A respectable carpenter can do the same thing for you for about 10k every 15-20 years. Again though the difference without cold winters there is far less incentive to actually deal with such things.
Edit: The science behind it is even fairly interesting, but basically wood reacts to the forces on it over time so the less symmetric the home the more extreme the warping can get. Which again hurts Japan with there love of unusual shaped wooden homes.
I've seen some crazy structures in the US, including a castle in Northern Idaho, but they tend to be in places with lax building codes (or lax building code enforcement) no HOAs and no urban zoning.
Just in the start of the article they mention a few things that we be hard to build legally in the US: handrail-less stairs, rail-less balconies, windowless rooms & houses.
Locations are "hot" because they're in places with good jobs, good services, good schools (though this one needs an asterisk), access to amenities and culture, etc.
Locations are "cold" to the degree that they're in high-crime, poor-service areas, or in remote areas without job prospects. Nobody wants to live in these areas, so with reduced demand come lower prices.
A 2,000 square-foot home costs $100k in rural Montana and $1M in Southern California because millions of people want to live in SoCal, and relatively few people want to live in rural Montana. Housing prices in Detroit are low because the job market in Detroit has been cratering for decades while crime has been increasing. A home with a seaside view is worth more than a similarly proportioned home abutting a freeway, because people would rather look at the former than the latter. A home in San Francisco is worth a fortune because lots of people with lots of money want to live here, but the inventory (supply) is limited. Etc.
Plenty of factors in real estate pricing are highly irrational. With few exceptions, location isn't one of them. When people pay for location, they're not paying for the house on that location; they're paying for the location itself. That's why comparing X square feet in Y area to X square feet in Z area isn't apples to apples.
But with negative population growth and virtual no immigration as is the case with Japan, fewer properties are needed to sustain the decreasing number of people. Supply exceeds demand, so prices fall.
But I'm not sure how much you can conclude from that as a condo could still appreciate (i.e. someone would be willing to spend more money for it) even if the underlying physical plant were deteriorating at some rate. It's probably also worth noting that, in a lot of cases in the US, single family homes in particular don't necessarily deteriorate. People do maintenance, redo their kitchens, add decks, etc.