The administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is determined to increase the birth rate—last year it fell below 800,000, 10 years earlier than expected—by any means necessary, even going so far as to suggest raising the consumption tax in order to fund programs that would encourage young people to marry and procreate, which sounds not only desperate but eminently wrong-headed. Another head-scratcher is the proposal to forgive student loans to either spouse or both spouses in a marriage when they produce a child, an idea that opposition lawmakers have found risible for a variety of reasons.
Koichi Hagiuda, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s policy chief, has another idea: Give young couples, regardless of income, priority to enter low-rent public housing. Tokyo Shimbun reports that Hagiuda made the suggestion at a party meeting in Saitama, saying that the first order of business for newleyweds is finding a place to live. The thing is, the central government doesn’t manage housing for the general public. Public housing in Japan is only maintained at the prefectural and municipal levels, so the government would have to get them to agree to the proposal.
The party’s secretary-general, Toshimitsu Motegi, elaborated on the idea by saying that the usual upper income limitations would have to be waived for the proposal to work. He also said that initial estimates indicate such a program would cost about ¥150 billion, most of which would be spent on renovations of public housing. On January 30, Hagiuda explained in the Diet that the current income qualification for public housing applicants—household monthly income should not exceed ¥158,000—would have to be changed for newlyweds, but in any case he said it shouldn’t be a problem since there are 200,000 vacant public housing units nationwide.
Reviewing our posts on this blog for the past year or so, we noticed that much of our writing is related to akiya, or vacant housing, which has become an increasingly visible problem that the media is finally addressing. However, when we look at the statistics, we notice that akiya are not limited to single-family houses, which is usually how the problem is framed in the press, but, in fact, is mostly comprised of apartments and condominiums.
The reasons for this lack of coverage may have to do with the fact that the image of apartments is that they are rented out, while the image of akiya is that of abandoned properties, so it’s difficult to imagine an apartment that temporarily does not have a tenant to be permanently vacant. However, condominiums are a different story since they are bought and sold, and for the most part when the press talks about the condo market they only talk about Tokyo, where apartments and condos are still in demand, even used ones.
But we found an article that appeared last spring in the business magazine President that covered vacant condominiums in depth, and, apparently, the situation is as dire as it is for single-family houses, even if the problem isn’t as visible.
The article quotes a number of experts, including an economics professor, Hiroaki Miyamoto, who says that in ten years one out of every four housing units in Japan will be vacant, and that the majority will be collective housing units, meaning condos or apartments. The main reason will be the lack of funds available to carry out long-term repairs and renovations on older buildings, which, as a result, will fall into disrepair and become not only difficult to sell, but in many cases uninhabitable.
To the international finance community, Japan is already considered a “pioneer” in the onset of permanently vacant properties, especially after the IMF conducted a study of the phenomenon in 2020. The outcome of the study was that vacant properties bring down property values in the communities where they are, and thus adversely affect regional economies.
As we’ve noted a number of times, the Japanese government carries out a large-scale survey of the housing and land situation every five years, and according to these surveys the gross number of housing units in Japan continues to increase even as the population has leveled off and started to decrease due to the birth rate. In 2018, the last time a report was released, the number of housing units stood at 62.4 million, while the number of households was 54 million, meaning that there is a 16 percent excess of housing units.
Until 1963, the number of households in Japan exceeded the number of units, but this ratio reversed in 1968 and ever since the number of units has continually increased in relation to the number of households.
Moreover, 85.9 percent of households in Japan, or 53. 6 million, contain full-time residents, meaning that 8.79 million units, or 14.1 percent of the total, contain no residents, and almost all of these are defined as “vacant” by the government—8.49 million, or 13.6 percent of all housing units. A property’s “vacant” status depends on how much or often it is used. In that regard, the portion of vacant properties has been increasing since 1988, when the vacancy rate was 9.4 percent.
President cites the methodology of the National Social Welfare Population Issues Laboratory, which has determined that the number of households in Japan will peak at 54.19 million in 2023, which also happens to be the year when the government releases the results of its latest housing survey. From now on the number of households will drop, and by 2040, the laboratory predicts the number of households will be 50.76 million, or 3.24 million less than it was in 2018. Extrapolating this trend further, the number of akiya will invariably continue to increase at an accelerating rate; that is, unless more properties are demolished.
As it stands, the number of demolished properties is also accelerating. Between 2008 and 2012, the number of homes demolished was 30 percent of the number of new homes that were built. Between 2013 and 2017, this portion increased to 62 percent. Nomura Research used this statistic to predict the vacancy rate for the future. If the 2008-2012 rate of 30 percent is used, the vacancy rate will be 25 percent by 2033 and 31 percent by 2038, but if the tendency shown in the change in the rate through 2017 is used, the vacancy rate will be 18 percent by 2033 and 20.9 percent by 2038.
So while the vacancy rate will continue to increase, it could slow down if the rate of destruction of superannuated properties increases as well, but that isn’t a given, since new home construction isn’t slowing down appreciably.
One of the main themes, if not the central theme, of this blog is that Japanese homes don’t hold their value over time the way they usually do in other developed countries, and while this situation does have a silver lining in that homes are affordable to a larger cross section of people, including young families, in the long run it makes it difficult for retired people to expect much in the way of a return on the investment they made in their home, which is usually the most expensive thing they own by a huge margin. But this feature of Japanese economic life has even broader effects on the quality of life for seniors, as revealed in a June 5 article in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
Certainly the main advantage of owning one’s home anywhere is that once the mortgage is paid off no one can kick you out. Regardless of income, a person who owns their home will always have a roof over their head. In Japan, this notion is usually conveyed by referring to the house or condominium as the person’s “final home” in that the person can live there until they die. The theme of the Nikkei article is that even this concept is no longer guaranteed or, at least, not assured in the way that most seniors thought it would be. The main reason is that the cost of renovations for homes has increased by 20 percent over the past ten years on average. This increase, combined with the fact that Japanese people are living longer, makes the possession of homes in Japan more difficult for people on fixed incomes.
According to a survey conducted by the justice ministry, the home ownership rate of households with two or more members and whose head of household is over 60 is above 90 percent, which is quite an impressive portion and speaks to the success of Japanese housing policy in how it has promoted home ownership over the years. In practical terms, it means the people who live in these households have a “final home” that should remove any economic anxiety from their twilight years, but Nikkei says that isn’t the case. For one thing, standalone houses in Japan tend to need extensive renovation work done on exteriors and roofs every 15 to 30 years, depending on when the house was built—the older the house, the more frequent such renovations are needed, and each time they are carried out they require at least ¥9 million. In the past year alone, costs for renovation have gone up substantially owing to inflation and the world distribution crisis. These costs are not expected to go down.
In our previous post, we talked about rent relief, and how the Japanese government had expanded its assistance to at-risk renters after the onset of the pandemic. As a result, the number of approved applications in 2020 was 34 times the number approved the previous year, though, in the end, it may not be enough since the people who need the money have to apply anew every three months up to a total of 12 or 15 months. Groups that advocate for at-risk households have tried to convince the government to make the relief open-ended, but the current limits are in line with government policy regarding public assistance, which, as once outlined by former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, is made available after an individual had tapped their own individual resources, and then those of their “community.” Government aid is the last resort.
An article published by the Asahi Shimbun on Jan. 5 gives some idea of what kind of assistance the “community” might offer in these cases. The piece profiles a 42-year-old landlord named Tomoyuki Matsumoto, who owns about 80 rental units in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. He rents the properties to people who may have difficulty finding places to live otherwise because they are poor and/or elderly. The article illustrates Matsumoto’s business model by describing one of his properties, a 3-story nagaya (town house) located in Daito, Osaka Prefecture, that’s more than 50 years old. The interior walls are traditional doheki (wattle and daub), the roof occasionally leaks when it rains, and the toilet sometimes overflows. The tenant, an 81-year-old widow who has resided there 3 years, doesn’t seem to mind these inconveniences because the rent is only ¥35,000 a month, which means she can live there on her national pension. Matsumoto shows up once every two months to collect the rent in person, which she finds very agreeable. As he tells the newspaper, having a personal connection with his tenants is very important to him, and as a result he responds to maintenance problems fairly promptly.
At the moment, the government continues to debate a plan to give families with younger children whose incomes are below a certain line payouts of ¥100,000 per child as a countermeasure to the continuing financial strain brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. One point of contention is that the government would like to pay half the funds in “coupons” that can only be used to purchase items at offline retailers, preferably within the municipality where they live. The obvious reason for this scheme is to stimulate businesses that are suffering due to the pandemic. Reportedly, the government has said it is up to local governments, who would prefer coupons since the money would likely be spent in their bailiwicks. However, the coupon scheme automatically limits the recipient families’ discretion with what they can do with their handouts. Many would obviously like to use that money for things other than purchases.
Like rent. In a front page article that appeared Dec. 15, Tokyo Shimbun reported that there is a good possibility that the rate of evictions nationwide will increase “rapidly” in the coming year. Actually, the newspaper doesn’t use the word “eviction” since there is really no exact equivalent in Japanese. The word that’s used is “taikyo,” which means “leaving” in various senses of the term. In principle, it is difficult for a landlord legally to evict a tenant for any reason in Japan, but there are many other ways to get a tenant to leave a property if the landlord doesn’t want them there anymore.
The thing about the anti-eviction law is that it is the only national law that protects the interests of tenants, and while it sounds like a major protection, other tenant rights that are taken for granted in other countries regarding things like fees and rent control and property maintenance are not similarly protected in Japan. However, tenants who are not formally receiving government assistance and find themselves in temporary financial straits can apply for rent relief from the central government. After the pandemic hit almost two years ago, the government relaxed some of the conditions so that more people could receive the subsidy and for longer periods of time. It proved to be popular. According to Tokyo Shimbun, the number of approved applications in fiscal 2020 was 34 times what it was the previous year.
Obviously, many renters were suffering financially and the subsidy was a big help, but while the period for applications was extended, it wasn’t made indefinite, and many recipients who have been relying on that money will soon be cut off. According to the emergency revision to the rental subsidy law, households in need could receive the funds for a maximum of 15 months. Tokyo Shimbun, in fact, covered the matter because a number of citizens groups had a meeting in Tokyo on Dec. 14 to demand the government make the rental subsidy program permanent and open-ended.
To mark the tenth anniversary of the disaster of March 11, 2011, we are posting one of the chapters from the book we are working on about Japanese housing. Some of the following appeared in slightly different form in the anthology known as #quakebook. For those who may be interested, we have been looking for a publisher or agent to handle the book for the last year and so far have had no luck in placing it, so if anyone has advice, connections, etc., let us know.
On March 11, 2011, the governor of Tokyo was Shintaro Ishihara, who later called the massive earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Japan that day “divine retribution” for some imagined slight to the nation’s soul. Never mind that all of the people who died or were left homeless by the disaster had lived in three northeastern prefectures far from the fleshpots of the capital he oversaw. Ishihara, a popular novelist in addition to being a politician, needed to make some sort of apocalyptic statement.
No one thought there was anything “divine” about the catastrophe, but we could all appreciate a cosmic joke. The quake hit right in the middle of moving season. The Japanese fiscal year, not to mention the school year, begins April 1, and traditionally many people move house during the month of March because of changing jobs and entering university. Consequently, before, during, and after the quake there were moving trucks parked outside our 38-story apartment building in the Minami Senju area of Tokyo, carrying furniture for people who were settling in. Elevators in Japan are designed to automatically shut down in the event of an earthquake and they can’t be restarted until a technician arrives to turn them on again. Given that the entire city was affected, some buildings had to wait hours or even a day before someone showed up to get the elevators working. Movers were stuck on the street with trucks full of furniture while their customers stood in their new apartments appreciating the view as they swayed back and forth during one of the aftershocks that occurred on an almost hourly basis. Did they regret their decision to move into a high-rise?
Perhaps not. The disaster helped answer a question: Would all these quake-proofed structures that had been built in the previous decades actually withstand a massive earthquake? Of course, the epicenter of the one we had just experienced was hundreds of kilometers away, but no buildings had collapsed in Sendai, the major city nearest to the quake and one with its own share of high-rises. So the technology seemed to work. But while it saved lives and property, it didn’t solve a more intractable problem: Once you’ve been in a major earthquake in a tall building, you don’t want to be in another one.
We had already been living on the 24th floor of River Harp Tower for more than ten years when the quake struck at 2:46 that afternoon, and had been through a good share of them. They just weren’t as intense. Usually, they started with a jolt followed by a gentle swaying. There are two types of quake-proof technologies for high rises in Japan. One is designed for flexibility: the entire structure absorbs the energy and disperses it more or less evenly throughout the frame, and the higher your floor, the wider and longer the sway. The other type, which is more expensive, involves rubber dampers in the foundation. We lived in the former type. On March 11, we didn’t feel that usual initial jolt but rather a slight rumble from the floor that just kept building until the walls started rattling violently. We knew this was going to be bigger than the usual quake and crouched together under a table. The shaking continued, and then gradually changed to swaying, which was much wider than it had been in the past. But the movement wasn’t as scary as the noise: a massive creaking sound that went on for more than two minutes.
We’ve written in the past about how local governments come up with schemes to repopulate their areas, often by dangling cash incentives in front of families or couples who plan to have children. The coronavirus crisis has reinvigorated these efforts since more people are now working from home. Prior to the mid-90s, the pattern of home ownership was that breadwinners who worked in large cities but wanted their own home would buy one in the suburbs and commute, because they often couldn’t afford city prices. There was also the idea that it was better to raise a family in the suburbs. And because employers paid for transportation, they put up with ever more punishing commutes. However, some years after the bubble burst and the so-called ice age of stalled employment possibilities set in, younger people with no real certainty of promotion within their companies and less likelihood of settling down decided that they would live near their place of work, regardless of what it cost, because they didn’t want to spend two hours-plus on the train every day. Maybe their fathers did that and they decided, no way am I going to do that. So they live in cramped, expensive rental apartments in the heart of the city, even if they didn’t like the city.
So the increased ingress of young people to places like Tokyo is not entirely due to decisions based on desire. But now, if your employer says you can work from home there’s no reason to live “near the office,” and, according to news reports, more people are leaving the city because they don’t like living there. Some local governments are already trying to exploit that trend. Sakae, a town in northern Chiba Prefecture just west of Narita, is now offering families ¥50,000 if they move to their area. The catch is that the family has to prove that one or more of the members is teleworking, a condition we find a bit puzzling—if the purpose of the money is to lure families, then why limit it to only teleworking people? Also, a one time payment of ¥50,000 doesn’t sound like much of a mind-changer, especially since the family has to pledge they will remain in Sakae for at least three years. Read More
That first step is a doozy: First world elderly problems.
Here’s a fairly common retirement strategy: The kids are gone and have families of their own, so the house you bought so long ago and which is likely paid for by now becomes too big, so you sell it and use the money to buy a condo somewhere in or near an urban center where public transportation and retail resources are easy to access. However, a recent feature in the weekly magazine Shukan Gendai warned people who are thinking of doing this to think twice. It may not be as easy as you think, and, in fact, it could end up being a disaster.
The number of people in Japan over the age of 65 recently exceeded 35 million, an expanding demographic that has become a target for real estate agents who are selling used or new condos, which tend to retain their value more readily than single-family homes. As it stands, many of these new retirees probably live in single-family homes in the suburbs of large cities to which the heads-of-household used to commute. These houses are likely two stories, a structural feature that becomes more of an inconvenience the older you get, and they are also probably far from public transportation hubs, meaning the people who live in them require a car to get around. Realtors use such reasonings to convince people to sell their homes and buy condos, and it makes sense, but not as much sense as it used to. First of all, there are just too many single family houses on the market and not enough people who want to buy them, and that disadvantageous ratio will only get worse as the population greys further.
Gendai also brings up the magic amount of ¥20 million, which is what a retired couple should have in savings to supplement their pensions. Actually, ¥20 million is probably not enough unless the couple is able to invest in some kind of financial instrument that can guarantee a small income, but most people still have their savings in time deposits, which generate almost no income, so the thinking here is that the couple lives off their pensions and doesn’t touch their savings since they may need it for emergencies. It’s a precarious way to live. Read More
Low income public housing is available in Japan through different levels of local government, either prefectural or municipal, though some larger cities also have public housing run by wards (ku). In almost every situation, however, the applicant, traditionally, has to have a guarantor, ostensibly as a backup in case the tenant is unable to pay their rent. Obviously, because public housing is only available for people of limited or no income, coming up with a guarantor could pose a problem, since it’s entirely likely that the applicant does not have anyone, meaning relatives, they can lean on for such support. In Japan, welfare authorities do not extend public assistance to applicants without first making sure that the applicant cannot tap a close relative for such assistance. It’s one of the uses of the koseki (family registration) system. Once it is understood that the applicant has no relation they can turn to, then welfare officials grant assistance. Of course, this isn’t a universal requirement—as with most bureaucratic processes, it’s up to the individual official—but it’s enough of a protocol to make applying for assistance difficult for many, and when it comes to housing, guarantors are thus required. Usually, officials insist on relatives, since they are more likely to honor the contract.
Now, apparently, some local governments are facing up to reality. An article in the Jan. 20 Asahi Shimbun reports that an increasing number of local governments are eliminating the guarantor requirement for public housing. Asahi Shimbun apparently carried out its own survey and found that 13 major cities in eight prefectures have waived the requirement, and the newspaper predicts that many more will follow.
According to the land ministry, in 2018 1,674 local governments provided public housing, and of these 366 reported cases where applicants were rejected because they could not provide guarantors. This problem is becoming more acute with the aging society, since single elderly people without means are less likely to have living relatives who can vouch for them. Consequently, the land ministry itself some years ago started sending out notifications to local governments to remove guarantor requirements. In the end, of course, it is the local government’s decision, but since the central government subsidizes welfare assistance, many local governments have taken the notification as a kind of directive. Read More
Cat Foreheads & Rabbit Hutches 