A research group attached to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Residential Land Committee took up the subject of housing loans on Mar. 12. The main concern of the committee was increasing the funding for the Flat 35 plan, a long-term fixed loan provided by the government to home buyers that links housing support financing organizations with banks and other financial institutions.

At present, Flat 35 provides loans for up to 90% of a house’s value, but the new proposal would increase the elegible value to 100%, which would essentially mean that home buyers who are approved for the plan do not have to pay a down payment on their home. The plan has yet to be approved, but it’s obvious the government is desperate to get home sales moving. Read More

In Japan there is a phenomenon called gomi-yashiki, which is probably not limited to Japan. The phrase literally means “garbage residence,” and describes a house and its property overflowing with refuse. What makes the situation special is that the refuse is there on purpose. The owners of the property tend to have a packrat mentality–they pick up stuff everywhere, especially from other people’s garbage, and just scatter it both inside their houses and outside. Tabloid TV news shows are always on the lookout for such houses because they and their usually eccentric owners make for such amusing stories. But according to a recent article in the Asahi Shimbun, this sort of packrat mentality may point to more than just eccentricity.

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Since 2005 the general feeling has been that the used condominium market in Japan is crap. Actually, it’s always been crap, and this blog will eventually get to that, but in 2005 it was officially crap thanks to Hidetsugu Aneha, the structural architect who was found to have falsified earthquake-resistance data on a number of buildings he helped design. Consequently, these buildings were deemed unsafe and some have since been rebuilt at great expense to condo owners and builders. Another consequence is that people realized that Aneha probably wasn’t the only one falsifying data to save money on things like steel support beams. In 2006 Susumu Ojima, the president of condo developer Huser Ltd., was arrested for allegedly selling units that he knew had been built with faked earthquake-resistance data. 

Ojima was eventually convicted and appealed the decision. His second trial just ended today with the judge upholding the conviction, but no one seems to be paying attention anymore, what with the recession and all. Used condominiums saw a pretty big jump in sales last year.

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Greetings. This blog is about Japanese housing. It is not an advisory guide, nor is it a professional survey of markets and trends, though over time such matters will certainly be addressed. Mainly, it is a means of coming to grips with the peculiarities of Japanese housing in all its iterations–economic, stylistic, cultural–from the standpoint of people who actually live in Japan, namely the authors, one of whom is a resident alien, the other a Japanese national.