Name game

Posted on by catforehead

Eight of Japan’s biggest real estate companies have joined forces to run a website called Major 7 (why 7 and not 8 I have no idea), which features articles about condominiums. Last summer the group conducted its annual survey to find which urban location is the one where people would most like to buy a condo if they could. For the sixth year in a row the number one answer in the Kansai region was Ashiya, which isn’t surprising. Ashiya, in Hyogo prefecture, has always had a high class reputation owing to the simple fact that rich people tend to live there and most of the city is located on a hill.

The most popular place in the Tokyo Metro area was Kichijoji, for the third year in a row. (For the record, the next nine preferences in descending order are Jiyugaoka, Yokohama, Futago Tamagawa, Ebisu, Hiroo, Kamakura, Meguro, Kagurazaka and Naka Meguro) The website doesn’t explain why Kichijoji is popular, but it isn’t difficult to guess. Tokyoites see it as youth haven filled with trendy retailers and which is close to a famous park. The preference is aspirational rather than practical, however, especially if you look at what’s available. Most available units for sale near Kichijoji station are small, cramped and expensive. You have to go at least 15 minutes from the station before you find something that might be habitable for a family: ¥31 million for a 60 square meter 2LDK, which is also a bit old and probably run down. If you want something new, you’ll pay through the teeth. A new 70 square meter apartment will put you back a whopping ¥75 million. The prices are, on average, much higher than comparable units in areas closer to the center of Tokyo.

It’s completely a name thing, and realtors know that. Kichijoji is in Musashino City, and when advertising condos or even rental apartments, many real estate agents list the nearest station to a Musashino property as being Kichijoji, even if it’s much closer to, say, Mitaka. Of course, if you live in Mitaka you can always get off at Kichijoji station and take a bus home. That way you can tell your friends you live in Kichijoji, but sooner or later they’re going to catch on.

What’s that smell?

Posted on by catforehead

Though Japan remains a relative oasis for smokers, rules and regulations regarding demon tobacco continue to get more stringent, and some 50 percent of smokers have said in surveys they plan to quit when cigarette taxes are increased next month. The thing is, it’s getting more and more difficult to find a place where you can smoke in peace. It’s even getting difficult to light up at home.

This is especially true of smokers who live in apartment buildings or condos. A neologism that has popped up recently is “hotaru,” which means “firefly” and refers to men (it always seems to be men) who go out on their balconies to have a smoke. They are called “fireflies” because the glowing ash of their cigarettes give them away in the dark. Either these men are saving their families from their habit or the families have banished them to out-of-doors, but in any case their exile to the veranda often irks the neighbors, especially those who live upstairs. Newspapers are increasingly filled with letters to the editor complaining of the hotaru scourge, with writers claiming that the smoke from neighbors’ cigs aggravates their children’s asthma or discolors the window sashes or forces them keep the windows shut in hot weather.

In condominiums these hotaru-zoku (tribe of fireflies) cause all sorts of communal rifts, especially since verandas are considered “common space,” and in more and more coops smoking is banned in common spaces. Building managers have to enforce these rules, which is pretty difficult to do. After all, what kind of punishment do you impose? You can’t kick the guy out, he owns the apartment.

The single life

Posted on by catforehead

Statistics recently released by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry show that the number of single parents is on the increase, and has been since 2006. This makes sense since the divorce rate is also rising, but what’s makes the statistics noteworthy is that more and more single mothers are women who have either never been married or were married but gave birth after their marriage ended.

Right now, the ministry estimates there are about 1,520,000 households in Japan headed by single monthers, and about 200,000 headed by single fathers. Though the statistics are a bit old, the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted surveys of “never-married” single mothers in 2000 and 2005, and between those two years the number of single mothers between the ages of 15 and 49 increased by 39 percent. However, when you break this number down by age groups, you find that the biggest increases are among women over 30: 57 percent for 30-34; 45 percent for 35-39; and 56 percent for 40-44. In terms of real numbers these increases don’t represent very much since the portion of children born out of wedlock in Japan is only about 1 percent. Read More

Yuzawa’s last resorts

Posted on by catforehead

Yuzawa-machi

In 1987, at the height of the so-called bubble era, when land and stock prices were on a bender, the Diet passed the Law for the Development of Comprehensive Resort Areas, whose idea was to make the development of leisure facilities a national project. Developers and local governments were given financial incentives, and property laws were relaxed so that more holiday-oriented projects could be carried out. One of the outcomes of the law was the invention of the “resort mansion,” condominium complexes that were built in outlying areas where city folk could spend their vacations. Read More

Beware the realtor

Posted on by catforehead

Future dream home or heartache?

According to the land ministry, in 2009 60,000 properties were put on the auction block due to failure to meet mortgage payments. That’s a 30 percent increase over the number of auctions in 2008. Meanwhile, 800,000 new homes, including condos, were built in 2009.

The Asahi Shimbun yesterday ran a story about two such delinquencies that happened to neighbors in a town in Chiba. Both of the houses involved were built in 2001 in a small, cramped development of six buildings about 10 minutes walk from the nearest train station, which the article declines to identify. Three of the houses have changed ownership since they were first sold.

One of them is a two-story, 130-square-meter house that still looks relatively new. It was originally bought by a dump truck driver, who is now 61, for ¥22 million, which is a fairly reasonable price for a house that size which is 90 minutes from the center of Tokyo. Read More

Interest drops

Posted on by catforehead

Think you can afford it now?

For the first time in seven years the long-term interest rate in Japan dropped below 1 percent, which should be good news for people in the housing and construction business, not to mention potential homeowners. The reason is less encouraging. Because the US economy continues to be sluggish, more people are purchasing Japanese government bonds and yen.

Consequently, the government will reduce the interest rate for Flat 35 housing loans starting in August, which are government-supported mortgages for between 21 and 35 years. Depending on how many years your mortgage is for, the interest rate will be from 2.3 to 3.2 percent, which compares to about 4.6 percent in the U.S. right now.

Though this development will certainly spur home purchases, it would be better if savings interest rates weren’t so low and salaries were rising. As it is, a lot of people just don’t have enough faith in the future to sink everything they have into a house or condominium.

Down by the river

Posted on by tsubuku

Feeling blue

In summer there are fireworks festivals everywhere throughout Japan. One of the most popular is the one over the Sumida River in Tokyo. Every year about 1 million people show up.  This year it’s taking place on July 31st.  During the second week of July the authorities start to install fences along the river banks.  The fences are to protect the spectators and prevent water accidents. In order to install the fences the people who erect blue tents (homeless poeple) on the terraces or along the paths have to leave and remove their tents. That means that during the festival the homeless people who live in these tents have to move somewhere else temporarily. In March 2010, the authorities said that there are 13,000 homeless people in Japan. That’s a decrease of 12,000 since 2003, when they counted the homeless for the first time. Both Sumida and Taito Wards counted 720 homeless people in their jurisdictions, and about 70 percent of them live along the Sumida River. They have nowhere else to go, but people who live nearby tend to complain.

Cookie cutter architecture 1

Posted on by catforehead

Due to zoning rules and the general cost of land, there are some oddly shaped buildings in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. Triangular plots yield wedge-forms (cutely referred to as tongari, or “pointed”). The taper on this four-story residence in Tokyo’s Arakawa Ward is too gentle to qualify as a wedge, but at its widest it’s only about two meters.

New depressing stats

Posted on by catforehead

The forecast is not fair

The government recently released new figures related to household income. As of June 2009 there were approximately 48 million households in Japan, each with an average 2.62 members. The average income per household was ¥5.475 million, which is ¥87,000 lower than the average in 2007. Household income in Japan peaked in 1994 at ¥6.642 million.

In terms of an aging society, there were 9.623 million households whose members were either all over 65 or a mix of over 65 and under 18. The average income of these households in 2008 was ¥2.98 million. Overall, 61.5 percent of the households earned below the average income, and 19.4 percent of these earned less than ¥2 million. About 58% of the respondents of a related survey said that “life is difficult,” the first time since 1986 that that answer represented the majority of Japanese. Read More

Ghostbuster apartments

Posted on by catforehead

One of the inevitable consequences of a rapidly aging society is that people who die alone in their homes become more of a conspicuous phenomenon. There’s a word for it in Japanese–kodokushi–which is usually used when someone dies and no one discovers the body right away. As Japan became a more atomized society following the economic growth period of the 60s and 70s, more and more old people have been living in urban apartments by themselves, cut off from their communities and even from relatives. Isolated neighborhood groups often form patrols that keep an eye on elderly people living alone, checking up on them regularly to make sure they’re all right. One firm that works with UR, the nation’s public housing corporation, helps older tenants who find it difficult to move about. For ¥500 a month they take out their garbage for them, a service that doubles as a kind of patrol for obvious reasons. Read More