Life Where I'm From
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2017–2023
11:57 · 4.2M views · Jan 21, 2017
A mini-documentary by a Canadian living in Japan explaining how an average family can afford a new detached house in Tokyo. It covers how houses are treated as depreciating assets and how Japanese zoning and building practices keep prices low.
It is the standard citation in HN housing debates for showing that dense cities can still have affordable single-family homes.
13 comments from Hacker News
Decent family houses in Tokyo are definitely more expensive than this, but not hugely (also Kyoto surprisingly). There's some interesting things about the Japanese housing market, for example, many homes become "worthless" after the end of the mortgage -- so they depreciate and are more like buying cars. Tokyo is also an absolutely enormous city with even more massive metro area. There's very few examples on the planet that come close. Tokyo is sometimes called "the infinite city" for good reason. This means that yes, you can pay huge money for a coffin in some areas, and little money for an entire house elsewhere in the same city. New York is kind of the same way in that respect, but is actually still smaller and less diverse. I could write a ton more, but I think this series from "Life Where I'm From" which is pointed out in the article is a fantastic overview of housing for a nuclear family in Tokyo. How an Average Family in Tokyo Can Buy a New Home - this video Brand New Japanese House Tour - [LINK] Are Japanese Homes Really Worthless After 30 Years? - [LINK] Old Japanese Apartment vs. New House - [LINK] What a Very Old Japanese House is Like - [LINK] Living in Traditional Japanese Townhouses: Kyo-machiya - [LINK] Checking Out New Japanese House Design and Technology - [LINK] I'd also point out this young couple who are expecting their first child (Paolo from Tokyo) What a Japanese Moving Company in Tokyo is like - [LINK] $1500 Japanese Apartment Tour in Tokyo Shibuya - [LIN
Here is a nice video explaining housing affordability in Tokyo: this video Notes: * No one thinks of residential housing as an investment, so there is no speculation. * Building codes are such that residential can be built almost anywhere. Japan has zoning, it is just really simplified. * There is no resistance to rebuilding, so it is done a lot (why houses last only 30 years, the market demands new housing). * Housing can be built on really small lots, only 2 meters of clearance is required. * A $300k low end house is around 6-700 SQF, which might not make sense from an American context.
Check out this video explaining why you can buy new detached homes in Tokyo for about 300k usd. this video * Land owners have an absolute right to develop their own land - neighbors can't block you. * You can build a 60 m^2 x 3 floor house on 100m^2 of land, or more. So basically they build way denser, and reduce opportunities to block/rentseek.
When I was young I remember reading about "Tokyo, the city of $11 hot dogs"...this was when a normal hot dog in the states was a buck or two. I never really stopped to figure that maybe it was just foreign stuff that was crazy expensive. One of the really eye opening things I've learned in the last few years is how relatively affordable housing can be...even within the Tokyo city limits. this video -- older homes can be much much cheaper. Here's a $1600/mo house [LINK] This needs to be considered against local incomes of course, so they're a bit less tempting to locals than to American foreigners from ultra expensive coastal cities. Part of this seems to be the particular Japanese combination of the shrinking and aging population + continued attempts at maintaining GDP via construction works + cultural preference for new living arrangements instead of old construction. But like anyplace, you pay for where you live and there are certainly incredibly expensive places to live. Outside of living arrangements, public transport, food, clothes, and so on...everything except for personal vehicles is relatively affordable on a foreigner's salary. However, salaries in Japan are surprisingly (sometimes shockingly low). I think I've heard that a person working in a regular "salaryman" job can expect to earn around their age * 10,000 USD. So if you're 30, you'll make around $30k USD. This information is a bit old, so expect it to be a little higher, but this table [1] from 2014 suggests a 32
> (single family homes with reasonable space) they make those cities unaffordable, they can't possibly scale, they are more hostile to walking, biking, and transit. None of that is actually true. this video and [LINK] Apartments are great for those who want them, but there's nothing wrong or anti-urban about family housing. You can easily give everyone (edit: everyone who wants one) their own single-family detached housing (with privacy, and parking), inside a major city, for really cheap. It would still be 100% supportive of walking, biking, and transit, and can scale for at least the next 100 years. I can state this as a simple fact, because it is, it already exists on Earth today. Wealthier Americans just refuse to let that happen in our own cities. We simply don't build urban housing for families (even in instances where zoning rules do allow it) so families literally can't make that choice. Cities force sprawl, and then complain that decisions must be made to service the sprawl they themselves made.