What America can learn from Japanese housing
Why the hell are houses so expensive? You cannot have housing operate as the nation’s principal investment vehicle and have cheap, abundant, affordable housing. Which is why I think we should all become Japanese, but not like Mickey Rooney at breakfast at Tiffany’s like in a wonky housing. I’m not racist. Unlike America, Japan’s housing strategy focuses on growth and churn. Housing is a commodity, not an investment. I need my car to get to work and flee bank robberies. It’s very valuable to me. And yet, cars depreciate in value as they get older and lose wheels and accumulate bits of squirrel and drifter. Your clothes become less valuable as they acrue ketchup and bullet holes. Houses, just in terms of the physical structure, also become worse with age. The pipes clog up with blood and ketchup. The roof gets termites and then the termites get dementia or more ghosts accumulate in the attic, getting high off of roof ketchup. The Japanese tax code is structured such that you were allowed to depreciate the value of your house on your taxes like you would equipment or a company car, but they allow for less and less depreciation as your house gets older. You want to keep your house you’ve grown attached to the ghosts or the ketchup, you can, but the older the house, the less you can write off on your taxes. Also, Japanese zoning is much simpler. They have 12 categories of zoning, which sounds like a lot until you consider that American cities can have four times as many categories because housing is subject to supply and demand. That great supply makes housing more affordable. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is around $4,000 in New York, 3,000 in San Francisco, and 2,000 in Chicago. The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo is $1,100. About half of what you’d pay in Chicago if you lost a bet and had to live in Chicago. The greater Tokyo area is 37 million people. Way bigger than Chicago. And in my experience, better kaiju. We should be more like Japan in terms of housing, more like Germany in terms of beer, and more like France in terms of cheese. But just cheese. Maybe women, probably not. Just cheese.
Why the hell are houses so expensive? You cannot have housing operate as the nation’s principal investment vehicle and have cheap, abundant affordable housing. It’s why Reason’s Andrew Heaton thinks America can learn something from Japanese housing. #home #housing #japan #japanese
27 Comments
The banter…awesome.
It gets even worse: ever wonder why affordable housing is only for renting? No such thing as an affordable single family home unless it’s in crap conditions in a crap neighborhood. And if you did try to put up a house self contracted and built? Well, it better be in an unincorporated area or you will never get it done for less than twice the market value. Meanwhile large holding companies buy residential housing to keep the prices inflated.
Good luck to all California disaster folks. Try and remember this when Newsome wants your vote.
Greed. Greed is the answer to your question.
This is how we should be taught economics lol
That one bedroom apartment in Tokyo is potentially a 100 sq ft, you forgot to mention that.
Cutting zoning categories and having houses depreciate in value still rings true though.
De-financialize housing
Why are they built so bad and not accepted. Poor code officials that look for certain things and disregard others. Builders wanting to make all the money and use the lowest price subs to work. Unrealistic build times. Get rid of house wraps and only approve the self adhesive type. Make the house that YOU want to live in is a MUST.
Yep…material things should be considered liabilities, not assets…and rents should be way less than a mortgage
$800 to $1000 in Michigan. I love how you use the most expensive examples. Why would we emulate a lesser country?
So then, if you adopt the Japanese method, how would you invest in property? You see, there are pros and cons to the method. Yes, you will have more affordable housing, but then, if you need to sell your house so that you can move to a different country, with the Japanese method, you can't. Meaning to leave the country due to any reason becomes very difficult unless you have savings, which in many cases that's power that people are not willing to give to banks due to corruption. So, in theory, it sounds great, that is if you are willing to put all your investments in one box and trust the government won't screw you over. In Japan, the people live on honor, but to the rest of the world, people don't give a shit about others, and the governments will try and screw them over, a prime example, just look at how bad the corruption is in South Africa. Another problem with using the Japanese method is that people are abandoning their homes due to their homes having zero value. Japan is struggling with a proper crisis that people don't want to live in villages anymore, so the history and culture are lost because everyone moves to all the cities.
Tokyo is more of a county. An apartment in central Tokyo can be just as expensive as New York. And the houses made here fall apart very quickly. There system is very big flaws just like ours does
You start by assuming housing is an investment (for the resident). That is false; it is a liability, not an investment. #RichDadPoorDad
Just cheese.
For all the people defending US cost of housing, the core point of this video still stands, when you treat housing a source of income or investment, it can't be affordable. Until we change the way view and treat housing, it will never be affordable.
They also make less money
Where is remy?
&☝️MORE LIKE REAL AMERICANS ON ILICIT DRUGS . BIG PHARMA & CIA is controlling the drug flo. I believe it's 85% of all drugs created in the world 🌎 r shipped here becouse of the demand 🫴. America 🤗love's ❤️DRUGS.😄 HIPOCRACEY AND PROFITS IN THE PRISON INDUSTRIES 📈 & BIG PARMA IS THE EVIL 😈THAT JACKS THE PRICE UP . WE THE PEOPLE KNOW WHO THE REAL ENEMIE IS TO THE HOMEBOUND 🤑🤑😄
Wisconsin here, hard no on France. We're gucci already. 🧀
Simple answer, Government is the main reason EVERYTHING is expensive
Try getting rid of more than 20 million illegal and the supplies will go up.
This is how we should be teaching kids
Im angry
Japanese salaries are much much lower, so housing has to be lower
This is disingenuous. I agree with the broad point, but Japanese often don't build houses to last. Earthquakes destroy them. And so many of the houses are not well made. In some environments like southern California that might make sense for America.
Many houses only recently begun being built with insulation in the walls in Japan. They would heat or chill with the outside.
😂 we need to repeal citizens united so we can get our voice back
Habitation real estate is not an investment in most of the cases – this is fairly new thing, basically from mid 2000s forward. The real problem is the lack of buying power. We have gradually lost ability to sustain a family from single income some time ago already, and now we are losing ability to sustain a dual-income household. Who would buy a permanent residence in such economy? Whatever's left got swooped by brokers. They are not the cause of the crisis, they are the symptom.
Europe faces it too, in different context, but still. Swedish national court has banned 140 year long mortgages, few years back. Let it sink – people, to buy housing in certain areas (especially in Stockholm, which is notorious for things like years-long waiting list for RENTING), are not able to afford it one, two, of even three generations of working class. At this point, not the house, but the mortgage itself becomes a heirloom. And this is in one of better salaried countries.
In Poland we have 12-15% APR mortgages for 40-50 years on multi-bedroom apartments that count as studio in rest of the world, and in many places rents are several times higher than mortgage, so people are forced to buy, because they cannot afford rent, which seems fine, until you have to move for work,
Japan has a Ton of homeless ppl.
Damn all the numbers except Tokyo were shocking! It's $1K for a 1bed in the Twin Cities. America had a subset of people who will complain about housing prices no matter where they are. I've found our area is still doing pretty good, but there's a subset who will complain because they've been trained to culturally. I have been extremely poor, just a few years ago my rent was $700 and my income was $1300. I never thought about buying stuff because the money didn't exist. And my friend who made six figures with her husband dared to say she was "struggling" while having a doll collection, a wall holder just for nail polish, just recently got a second fridge. I have fatigue on people who pretend they're struggling instead of wasteful with their money.