Comment by kulahan

I live in Japan by the way. It’s no where as dire as you make it sound. The houses are mostly knocked down because of the cultural attitude towards them and people’s lack of DIY knowledge when it comes to renovations. Many young people in the country side a slowly changing attitudes but the bones of many of their houses are no less garbage than anywhere else in the world. If your house costs $6k USD, then it leaves you a lot of left over money for renovations.

I’ll agree it sucks you can’t have a really cheap house an 15% return on your money (which seems like an exaggeration). But with some ingenuity I think people could make the lower property and house prices work for them a lot more than they do.

Where on earth are you getting 15% on real estate and over what time period?

My internal Brandolini's Law alarm is sounding loud and clear from this post.

If you think real investors should make 12-15%, you are essentially bankrupting the next generation. (Even 10% annualised would do it.) That is enormous intergenerational wealth transfer, ensuring the next generation cannot own a home before they are 50 years old or they rent forever.

Outside of central Tokyo (the most central ku's surrounded by Yamanote train loop line), there is almost no capital appreciation for homes (and apartments) because NIMBYism does not exist (quite literally through the national building code). As a result, they build enough for the demand, and home prices are relatively stable, roughly rising at the rate of inflation. France is pretty similar outside of central Paris. Before post-COVID inflation got out of control, Germany was also similar.

The center of Tokyo and Osaka are a bit special because they are the largest job centers in the whole country, and there is very (insanely?) high demand and not enough land to maintain low capital appreciation for homes. That said, there is still constant tear-down/rebuild projects in Tokyo to build denser housing. It is hard to walk 10 mins in central Tokyo and not see a tear-down/rebuild project. Fortunately, they have incredibly strict noise controls at construction sites, so you rarely hear it, but you see it.

    > the houses in Japan are knocked down and rebuilt between essentially every occupant

This is absolutely untrue. This is a near-perfect Internet Brain/Terminally Online type of comment. Houses are normally only knocked down in Japan when they are 50+ years old. (The "30 year rule" from the 1980s just won't die on the non-Japanese Internet.) The stuff that I see knocked down looks like it is from the 1950s -- pure wood, rotted to the core, and paper-thin windows. It makes no sense to restore these homes when there is no legal restriction for tear-down/rebuild. There are lots and lots of second hand single family homes that change hands between owners. All of the people that I know who own single family homes bought them second hand. There is a whole segment of the real estate construction market that does home restoration. It is pretty common to buy a second-hand single family home, then do X currency amount of restoration. Sometimes, these companies buy the used homes themselves, do restoration, then sell at a price for profit. Apartments are similar in wider Tokyo area.

    > they're pieces of garbage meant to last a decade or so

Again: Internet Brain/Terminally Online type of comment.

    > So yeah, it's extremely rough when there's nothing valuable to invest your money in.

Have you seen the Nikkei 225 stock index in the last 10 years? (How does the total return compare to your country of residence?) Also, Japan does not enforce capital controls, so regular people are welcome to invest their money in foreign stock markets, such as the S&P 500 stock index. They can do so using numerous domestically-listed mutual funds and ETFs.