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Hello. Former 大工 aka carpenter in Japan. I built a few homes as well as renovated many. Unfortunately, much of this video is simply incorrect. The average house built in Japan is not different than the average house built in America. The construction method from foundation to framing is almost identical to how we build them in the U.S. They tend to use pole construction rather than stick built though. They’re not building houses that don’t last, it’s that only in the last 30 years did they actually start to build homes that were similar to western ones. Also, when you buy a used home you don’t have to upgrade everything to current earthquake standards. This is just incorrect. A majority of what happens is replacement of tatami style rooms to western ones with modern flooring and replacing mud clay walls with drywall. The reason many people choose to tear down houses instead of renovate is because there was a huge housing boom during the bubble period from the 60s to the 80s. Those houses were built with very dated techniques and were built quickly without the best construction methods. Houses built today are built much better. Another factor is that there is limited land. Sometimes two old houses will be purchased in order build a larger new home or a home with a yard. There are so many factors that are just too nuanced to understand unless you actually lived there and did real estate and carpentry like I have. This video is 80% incorrect.

There's no point in building long term housing in Japan when Godzilla destroys your house every couple of years. 😮😂😂

Here in the US we get cheap prefab homes that barely make it to 30 years with a pricetag of something they think will make it to 300 years.

Just in the last year: 1. Roof repair 2. New floodlights 3. Kitchen cabinet resurfacing 4. Gutter realignment 5. Woodwork. It never stops when you own a house.

Here in Austria i lived in a house built in the year 751- that is over 1200 years old. The only thing that was obvious are the 3ft (1m) thick walls and tiny windows. Not a museum but a regular house.

Hi from Okinawa Japan! Yes! We got an estimate of our home that is built with Concrete about @44 yrs ago (Okinawa does not have the amount of earthquakes as mainland Japan). The estimate was zero for the house even with all the @$200K renovations, but the land had risen to 5x the original amount because we are 3 blocks from the beach and considered a resort area. The Japanese value land over House!

"here in the US, we are used to seeing really old houses" - as somebody from Europe: "No, you aren't!" 🤣😂🤣

A few issues you missed - 1) there are still a lot of new houses constructed on “virgin” land (former rice fields cut up into residential lots) and lots of old homes being left empty to rot. So your ‘replacement rate’ is actually a bit skewed from reality. 2) one reason to abandon old houses and start from scratch is the extremely high cost of demolition and disposal of construction. waste. The derelict house removal represents a high cost compared to just buying a new house on repurposed rice field lots. Tearing down and rebuilding in the same plot only makes sense if you are in a downtown area with limited availability of land.

30 yrs in uk is considered a new build almost. My 100yr old house isnt considered old as half the towns houses are 100s of years old n zero stigma or desirability issues related to their age. People like how solid they are, with better room sizes, high ceilings, n better noise insulation

Homes shouldn't be investments at all. They are homes, meant to enabling life, give people shelter and safety and a place to express themselves. They are not dead gold bars rotting away in some box waiting to be sold. If you buy a house for X and sell it 30 years later for X/2, that is okay. You lived in it which means you have gotten your value out of it and the object has aged and worsened its condition. That's how it should work.

I lived in Japan for about 10 years and continue to visit regularly and there are a "few" things there that are designed to keep the economy in "motion". As you mentioned houses are one of them. The next one is the car industry. The cost to keep an "old" car on the road is incredible high, which in turn has most people just rotating through cars more frequently. I rented a 1970's era house in Japan and that buggah was ready to be torn down, lol. Don't get me into the no insulation or central HVAC.... Though visiting an older traditional style house, that thing was built with nice big thick wood beams and would probably last another 100 years. Japan is such a cool, unique place for sure!

You missed one of the biggest parts of this equation. There is HEAVY land transfer taxation. Maybe family members refuse to accept homes they inherit specifically because the tax is significant. Similarly corporate ownership of private residence is taxes in other ways like capital gains tax that is in addition to income tax. From my understanding (which is definitely limited) they don't tax private citizens in the same way and often fully exempt up to certain amounts for housing allowances and living costs for average residents. So it costs more as a business to own property than it does as a private resident which helps to curb the mass home buying from institutional investors. In the USA institutional investors in single family home ownership makes up more than 30% of the entire market. In my city of Houston it's nearly 40%.

This video is very interesting, since from an American-German's perspective living in Germany, US houses are also made rather "flimsy". The thin wooden walls you see in some US homes, where you could kick in the door or even the wall, if you bring enough force, or just crash a motorcycle in it, don't exist in Germany. Also, US houses require a lot of heating since they are only slightly insulated. Of course, that is mostly no problem, since you see such houses more often in regions with higher average temperature. But it does have an impact across the nation, as the houses just aren't built as good as they could be. Also most US houses deteriorate faster than most German houses.

In Portugal, in a small city such as mine, building last centuries. Some last millennia. We still use a bridge built by the Romans 2.000+ years ago. Castle is 800 years old. My parents' house is almost 200 years old. All 30 houses from old families (counts/barons/...) are much older than 200 years. Many houses in the center are centuries-old as well. I cannot imagine to live with that 30 years rule!!!

My son and I went to Japan for ten days about seven years ago. One of many things that really stood out for us was how clean everything was. I don’t think we could have filled a small trash bag with the trash we saw. We were walking on a city street and I noticed all the “maintenance vehicles” (like trash trucks) looked new, but weren’t. Interesting county and people. Oh, and after eating lunch one day in a small town, the old woman at the front used an abacus to total our bill. 😊

This video is very well researched but I think there are a few points that are a bit odd? Like mentioning wabisabi? I've lived in Japan for 14 years and have gone to several model home venues to look into buying a home. Wabisabi plays no part in the approach to home buying or building lol That's more in the context of interior design than the actual building. Also, modern homes typically don't use wooden joints because they're expensive and typically reserved for traditional structures like temples. Most new homes are prefabs built in a factory and shipped in pieces to where the home is going to be built. They typically use screws and bolts since these are more resistant to cracking during an earthquake. These older cheap homes that international folk are losing their minds over are cheap because they aren't insulated or are missing other modern fixings (some might still have old Japanese style toilets) or they were built in regions that are too remote for most modern families. This is the problem my husband has with the family home his mother lives in. It's a 4 bedroom 1.5 bath house in a mountaintop residential area. Built in the 90s for about 300k, currently worth about 80k. Because it's on a mountain, it's cold all winter and has to be heated with a gas heater or via ac units in each room. The gas heater will produce carbon monoxide so the room has to be aired every few hours. Once these heaters are shut off, say at night, the temperature inside the house is comparable to temps outside. The train station is 15 min away by car, 45 by bus, and 1.5hrs by train to the closest big city, which is typically where everyone works. As you can see, a lot of concessions have to be made, especially when you don't work in the same city. Luckily, just renting a house or apartment in larger cities is pretty cheap (usually under 1k), and though it's still not insulated (that's a more modern feature for homes here), it's much more convenient because you almost never need a car and can get downtown in 10 min. Now, say you wanted to buy a home in this city where renting is so cheap? Welp, land tax in cities is crazy and you'll easily burn through closer to half a mil trying to get a 70m squared home. Renting in the city is reasonable, buying a home not so much. while buying a home in the countryside is super affordable, there are tons of other hidden (lifestyle) costs. Also, wages have been stagnant for 30 years, which is another reason why housing is more affordable. Sorry for the wall of text! Just wanted to give a bit more context for housing in Japan! It's not a mystic cultural phenomenon, mostly just economics and a country that's been in a depression for 3 decades. The way they take apart wooden structures like temples and shrines is pretty cool tho!

Steel Reinforced Concrete - 47 years. The Useful Lifetime is written into the Japanese Tax Code under its Depreciation Rules. Whilst the structure and interiors depreciate, the land does not. The cheap houses are abandoned houses in the countryside, where the old people have died, but the young people have long ago moved to the big city...

Japan is only dense in the areas of the megapolis like Tokyo, Nagasaki and Osaka where jobs are. Young people migrate to larger cities. In the countryside there are a lot of dying villages and towns.

Fun Fact: that one of Japan's most important religious sites 'The Ise Grand Shrine' is a true 'Ship of Theseus'. Every 20 years it's demolished and rebuilt at second site using the exact same layout, type of wood, and ancient techniques. So is it over a thousand years old or is it less then 20? It's more preserved then Roman ruins in a way. Even though the pieces are young the temple is ancient. Honestly, i just love the idea of it.

Well the problem with lack of affordable housing in the US is that homes became investments. So i dunno, you can afford a home there. You cant afford one here. You can also afford to rebuild homes there for a reasonable price

9:55 an entire episode about Japanese joinery sounds really interesting

In Japan the house building industry employs a lot of people and does not want to build houses that last too long in order to preserve employement in that sector, like other industries in Japan as well. Preserving jobs and avoiding social unrests is a very strong aspect of the Japanese culture.

While working in Japan few years ago I talked to a Japanese coworker about houses not being insulated…his answer still ecoes in my mind …”what do you mean? Winter is cold, and summer is hot, that’s just how it is, you can’t change nature”….the Japanese approach to nature is total alien for the western mind…

Italy and Spain were selling off old homes for as little as one Euro. Nearly every one of the buyers now regrets their purchase because most of these homes sat vacant for 10 years or more and the repair costs, taxes and hidden fees to close the sales were exorbitant. These one Euro homes quickly became 200K+ Euro money pits.

This is a good video. Well researched. A few things need to be added. Some homes in Japan are in fact hundreds of years old and still livable. (And very cheap, I might add.) One of the reasons old homes are torn down rather than renovated is that Japanese lifestyles have changed drastically over the years. People don't eat at the kotatsu on tatami mats anymore. Instead they prefer dining tables. People want air conditioning, which means lower ceilings. The zashiki and the kitchen used to be on the opposite sides of the house. Now people want a living-dining-kitchen in a connected room. These changes in taste happened in a span of a few decades, and added to the incentive to build newer homes.

Another thing worth mentioning is insulation and energy efficiency. Older homes are poorly insulated, drafty, and frequently heated with kerosene space heaters (which are terrible for air quality and also a fire hazard). Newer homes tend to be all electric, using heat pumps for heating/cooling and IR ranges for cooking. Living in a well insulated modern home is just so much more comfortable and convenient than living in an older home.

The well-built house I grew up in (built in 1940) for $11,000, is now valued at $750,000. and is well preserved.

Minor editing issue, in 1940s, many Japanese cities were bombed / burned during WW2. There was an immediate need for housing after war. Lots of cheap, incredibly cold / hot houses depending on season were erected in 1947-1960s. I would describe it as camping out indoors to my friends. PS - During the 2024 Noto earthquake an entire district of older wooden houses burned. Good riddance to these structures!

I'm a real estate investor and 90% of my portfolio is properties that are between 100 and 200 years old. I love the history, the masonery work, the quality of craftmanship from that time. I love to expose brick and stone wall. Those building are good for at least another 100 to 200 years old. I can't imagine building things that last only 30 years...

Interesting. As an exchange student in 1969 I stayed with a family in a 200 year old home in Kanazawa.

That "deconstruction" is mind-blowing! I've never seen or imagined anything like that. Wow...most amazing thing I've seen in a long time

I live in Finland in a wooden house which is once demolished, moved to another location and rebuilt in 1921. I don't know how old the house was when it was demolished and moved.

Renovation in Japan is difficult. Like upgrading Toyota carola of 90 to new Prius2024. And Toyota is actually house builder.

Here in Iceland we talk about "investing in concrete" when buying a property because the code here is all houses must have the steel reinforced concrete outer walls of at least 30cm thickness built on a concrete slab. Prefabs and lumber houses are allowed for single story houses if they're on a 70cm thick concrete slab. Property prices has gone up by 11% per year on average since 2000. A basic shithole condo will cost you at least $400k

There’s 100 year old houses in Utah that are in the earthquake zone on a fault line, but are on the historic registry and illegal to tear down; you have to get permits to restore the house and the houses have to be remodeled a certain way.

Producing quality that lasts is one of the key mechanisms that we must use to take the climate crisis, and such planned short life times seems to me to be counter productive. Having a small number of vital things that last is a key to a future.

It's funny to hear "we're used to seeing really old houses", and then show the home at 1:43. Its architecture suggests the 1930's - 1940's. The homes in the neighborhood where my parents lived were built in the 1880's. All of them still stand today, and are in excellent condition. People living in, say, Philadelphia, will commonly be older than that But even at these ages, they're nothing compared to homes in Europe. There, it's pretty common for the homes people currently live in to be from the 1700's. In relative terms, I considered homes in the U.S. to mostly be 'tear-down'. However, Japan's alleged '30 year' rule just reset the dial on 'tear-downs'.

There is a difference between land and house. The land usually appreciates in value and the house usually depreciates in value.

If you can talk about the timeframe of general automobile ownership in Japan, you find out it is around 10 years with very low miles. What happens to them after ten years? They most likely will go to auction for cheap and sent over seas. Then the owner will buy a new car out of a practical financial decision.

also note the very frequent earthquakes and typhoons. It puts a lot of wear and tear on a house. Nobody wants to live in an old house that could collapse on you because the support beams finally give way after 40 years of earth movement. Thus japanese houses depreciate in value the same way a car depreciates in value. Also the doors in a old house may not swing shut any more, and the sinks no longer drain right because the house has become tilted after 30 years of earth movement.

They impose the same life limitations on automobiles, requiring them to have a tough, stem to stern safety inspection after a few years, basically capping the life of their automobiles. This means that new vehicle demand will always be present. The car enthusiasts on other continents benefit from this by being able to buy up gently used cars at a low price as they are too expensive to certify after a few years

My house was built by my grandfather in 1949. 75 years later, ive put about 20k$ into it (siding, windows, roof, gutters etc) and its as good as the day it was built

Our house is now 89 years old for the part that is the original floor plan. Previous owners added on to in the 1970's. partial fire in the late 1970's, Supposedly repaired and remodeled the kitchen at that time. Added 4 feet to front of house in 1982. We bought in 1992. In 2000 weTore 2/3 of top story off , fixed lied about fire damage repair in attic area, pushed 2nd story out to outer walls eliminating dormers and leaky roof. When we repaired and remodeled in 2000, we took care to do things that would have the house last another 70 to 80 years or more. Word of advice; If you are buying any house; be sure to get a pest and dry rot inspection and a complete home inspection from a very competent company/ inspector.

You missed a big cause of houses breaking down in Japan. Houses built after approx 1970 have inadequate (or in many cases, none at all) airflow in the subfloor. This leads to rotted foundations after 10-30 years. The insects will eat the subfloor wood and work upwards into walls. Once they get there, it isnt worth fixing. This often doesnt occur in houses built before the war. If the roof tiles are maintained to prevent water leaks, you can see structures last hundreds of years. You can see this when visiting temples here. They maintain the structures properly and it has proper airflow, so the wood stays dry. If you go back a little further, you will find a wood called Keyaki that is used for structural materials. Extremely hard. heavy and dense. Nowdays its all Pine (Sugi), cheap, lighter, and not dense. Easy food for bugs. This further prolongs the lifespan of the structure.

Builder from UK here. We have houses in most citys and towns that are hundreds of years old. Even the old timber frame houses can last if cared for. Stone built can last fo hundreds of years as well. Modern practices that are two distinct fields - timber built (on conrete pad) and block and brick built on concrete footings. The block built (concrete blocks) will last longer than timber built. Britain is damp so timber can be prone to rotting. Not an ideal material in the UK, but cost of build is cheaper. The house I am renovating at the moment is brick built with solid 9" walls - its about 150 years old. Why America has gone down the route of timber houses I don't understand. It's mainly European forefathers built stone and brick houses initially - but that seems to have disappeared.

Excellent summary.

they have earthquakes the ground moves. So their houses have to be replaced every so many years and all the buildings. They get cracks and stuff in them because the ground is moving. The moisture and the stuff in the air and a lot of houses are mostly wood just like here in the United States but we have a totally different situation here than over there the place where the houses should be temporary in the United States is on the west coast because they have earthquakes and the ground moves.

Land fill must be a nightmare with disposable buildings.

Earthquakes and concrete life. Earthquakes appear every other day, small or big. that shakes the foundations of heavy concrete buildings. Lighter, wooden ones are more resilient and cheaper to do. Also, concrete like in Japan was rated at 35 years I believe. After that it is considered unsafe I guess? Which is strange; I am pretty sure it can last longer based on materials used like type of sand.

Oow snap I think you are on time with this video...at least for me...wow thanks guys!❤

This is flat amazing. Just amazing. They have left us all behind when it comes to innovation. Great video.

Deconstructing a tower. Now that is super cool. Loving these videos.

You are a very good KZfaqr.

My dad's two garden sheds are 70 years old. He has replaced felt and painted. Both still in use with electrical wiring. Both dry and in good watertight order. No earthquakes yet though.

You can float a house on bearings so that the home's inertia will keep it still during an earthquake. I've seen it done in Mexico and it works quite well. When the ground shakes, the house is relatively still. After an earthquake, they secure anchored winches to the structure and drag it back onto its original position if the ground or the house has moved. Repositioning can be accomplished in less than an hour. There is an elementary school in Mexico City that is three stories tall that has been built like this. It floats.

My great-uncles house built around 1950 was just demolished. They were very small at the time. But there's a trendy area here near DT that was built in the 1920s, grand 2 story homes. Many of these have been jacked up to build modern basements. It's THE place to be on Halloween. Damn new houses are made with glue board sheets. VERY unsafe in a fire. Lucky if you have 2 minutes to get out. The floor beams will collapse very fast. Old 2x10s would last half an hour likely. Houses were built with fir until the forests were gone and replaced with half as strong spruce.

Japan is not the only country selling old homes for a very low price/ Countries like Italy is selling homes for one Euro. People buy them and fix them up. For Italy, it's to bolster population numbers, but the homes in Italy actually tend to need just as much repair work as the Japanese old homes, if not more.

That’s depended of area, rural yes. House near train station or popular lines trend to evaluate more after 8 years (around 100 - 200k) . That’s land only. The house itself depends of many factors, for example if you buy a Sekisui 積水 house, the value of the house barely go down, now if ur house is brand XYZ. Well then it will mostly evaluated at 0. I recommend mansions for investment, one we got for 350k 10 years ago is selling for around 600 k. But we plan to rent it for 2k.

This is so wasteful, especially when you consider the time & skill needed for all of the fancy woodworking.

Question, does the low price of old houses include the land/lot. If so it still seems like a very reasonable purchase. I wonder if there are any smaller pre fab homebuilders in Japan that would also meet modern codes in order to economically replace the old structure if it were too expensive to renovate or build new.

You should look at some old Amish barns. The joinery is more strictly functional versus artistic, but the barns are often half a century old or older, with many probably 100 years plus.

My cousin bought a cottage near a ski resort that was dirt cheap since Japanese aren't really into the cottage life. However with all the weight of the snow accumulations it was collapsing in multiple spots.

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 *🏠 Japanese homes are often demolished and replaced after 30 years, leading to their diminished resale value.* 02:22 *📉 Japan's residential building replacement rate is significantly higher than in the US and Europe, contributing to the short lifespan of homes.* 03:45 *🌏 Various factors such as history, culture, geography, and economics contribute to Japan's practice of building homes with shorter lifespans.* 06:22 *💰 Japan's 1990s credit crunch caused a significant drop in home values, contrasting with the trend of rising home prices in the US over the same period.* 07:17 *🎎 Japanese cultural principles like Wabi Sabi influence attitudes towards home ownership and renovation, favoring functionality over sentimental attachment.* 08:12 *🏗️ Japan's frequent natural disasters and stringent construction codes necessitate the construction of homes that are easy to replace and upgrade, contributing to the cycle of demolition and reconstruction.* 10:03 *🔨 Japanese mastery of silent deconstruction techniques allows for the dismantling of buildings without dynamite or wrecking balls, contributing to efficient urban renewal.* Made with HARPA AI

Some of the old homes in the rural areas are well made. It's great for farmers and retirees.

Well if its near a fault line or earthquakes are common, you just want a roof over your head that you can rebuilt cheaply every time an earthquake happens.

The earthquake / environmental situation influences culture, thinking and policy. Think about it, if your house had been in a few earthquakes, it could affect the structure, even if don't see anything visually. So it makes sense on that level to just replace the homes on a more frequent basis. As the video says, it makes more sense in Japan to be able to rebuild quickly and cost effectively.

Decent video, in future instead of going for bite sized videos teasing different subjects, give us the full break down and engineering of the Japanese joints etc. being a science/engineering channel I thought that was going to be the focus. To be fair, I thought that was why the houses were so much cheaper so it was cool to see the reasons you mentioned. Let’s get some 30-45 min videos breaking down the actual science/engineering of building houses with no nails etc like a conventional American house. Maybe even compare that to American Log Cabin style abodes, food for thought.

When we talk about high real estate prices in the west we're really talking about high prices of land not the structure of a houses. Just a basic size building lot in San Francisco would easily cost between 500,000 and 1 000 000 USD. It might seems strange that Japan would have more land USA, Canada and Australia but they actually have much less strict zoning regulations that allows to turn family house into apartments very easily. That way there is enough housing supply in cities where people want to live.

The profit is made in the land sales in metro areas like Tokyo. If you demolish your home before selling to a buyer, you can get a higher price.

You should do a video about how those 100+ year old timber-framed homes are being disassembled and re-built, sometimes half way around the world.

All that begins, must end. A core idea in Shinto. Even many heritage sites are built for short lifetimes and fully rebuilt every few decades

Financing also plays a part, if you’re borrowing, the bank values the asset at 30 years, I.e. after 15 years the bank will only lend half the original value. In addition to this Japan’s weather is wild, most of the country will experience snow fall in winter with temperatures below -5c and summer temperatures consistently over 30c with 80% humidity. Because of this housing standards are important, houses built today share no resemblance to construction 20 years ago. Today’s houses have a sealed and insulated foundation with spray foam walls and attic, heat recovery and filtration systems. Highly efficient and very comfortable throughout the year. 1970’s house has gaps everywhere, cold or hot air blows straight though the building, heating and cooling costs a fortune. Tatami floors require this airflow from under the house to manage humidity…..it’s a nightmare in winter.

Thanks for this, quite refreshing thought if now living in a place where real-estate is nowhere to being affordable. Would be nice if we had same thought on rebuilding: would make the CO2 challenges we have also better to predict, now isolating/retrofitting old houses where it would make sense to build a new isolated one.

I own and live in a small cottage in a small Canadian town. It was first occupied in 1916. It has a lousy foundation and is built of simple wooden materials. But it has been expanded, rebuilt, repainted and remodelled many times. I find it astonishing that Japanese homes built with far better craftsmanship and materials are torn down and thrown away in far less time.

Here in the UK the median age of houses is 65 years and people normally assume houses will last at least 100 years or more. We recently moved to one of the few newer houses in the village built in 1972 from a 100 year old house. Most date from the beginning of the 20th century and some are up to 400 years old. The latter will not lose value. The biggest problem for the UK is that all this old housing stock is expensive to insulate to modern standards.

*this is before I watch the full video* But based on what little I do know about Japanese culture, its that they value land quite a bit. Since they dont have alot to begin with, its relative value is *much* higher as a result. So yea you gonna get that house dirt cheap, but they gonna get you on some sort of land tax....

As some ome from the UK were the housing stock is limited. Most of it is very good quality. Except 1940-50 and 2008 - now. Seeing houses going down in price is crazy. I am sitting in a flat converted from a 1880s house

Hmm... After watching closely Tokyo Llama renovate 1970's era akiya bank home that had been vacant for a few years. To me the construction and foundation was still sound. Even carpenter's commented on the excellent condition of their home during renovation. What I haven't heard was the current value after the renovation.

I find this interesting, as my house is 115 years old. Some of my relatives in Europe live in houses that are over 400 years old.

The Japanese Construction industry does some really remarkable things; such as.... Drive a front end loader into a space barely wider than its' own tracks to take down an old building. And nary a scratch in the next building's paint. When they paint or remodel a large building, they put up scaffolding and drop-prevention canvas around the entire structure, no matter how many stories. They use sky scraper cranes to place utilities and other hardware into new buildings WHILE working around existing structures, power lines or anything else. It is truly astonishing to behold.

One important issue is the location - public transportation is very important, and access to job centers. Houses away from good transit access are no longer wanted. These tend to be the low price houses we hear about.

1:44 "really old houses in the US"... My european instinct just smiling hehe

Probably the long history of earthquakes, fires, and tsunami sets the platform for temporary buildings... then it depends on whether you slap something together that just meets code, or you build something "for the grandchildren" (孫物 mago-mono) that is the best possible at the time. The homes being sold very cheaply.. can have dry rot, be in landslide zones, situated on difficult access roads, be in communities without medical or educational facilities, and most probably will need loads of renovation before they become liveable.

Housing affordability is very different around the world, strongly influenced by culture, politics and geographical circumstances. And I find that many people are aware of culture-differences to their day-to-day life when contemplating migrating, but often overlook the property-market, expecting that to follow the same principles as their home-country.

Interesting. I live in Canada, and the house that my grandmother and mother grew up in is almost 200 years old. It's a wooden house. It experienced major renovations in the 1920s, 1940s, 1970s and around the year 2000. I've never lived in a building that was younger than 50 years old. My current house is 75 years old.

Shocked that you went into this subject that's usually reserved for Japan-vlog channels.

Here in Russia, many still live in blocks of flats, constructed during the Kruschev era and designed to be cheap temporary, but which still stand - around 70 years after. Although in wealthy cities like Moscow they are being slowly demolished.

A Japanese jointer video would be great.

Episode on Japanese joinery for sure 👍

Awesome video, new here and i was expecting culture shaming but i got the reverse, well done and very informstive.

Japan is only densely populated in the cities. It has huge regions with very few inhabitants and urban areas (including smaller cities) that die-out, since all younger people move to the cities. I'm mentioning it, since people often tend to believe "there is no living space" in Japan. While in fact, everyone in Japan could easily live in a house. There's more than enough room for that in all of Japan, just not in the large cities. (In short: basically it's just that the cities in Japan are more densely populated than US cities.)

Places with high land values lend themselves to re-development within relatively short time frames such a several decades. Given the high price of land, spending more to renovate over time becomes financially feasible more often.

It is because Godzilla rampages there all the time. 😂

If you happen live in Japan like I did you will know how…it comes down to property tax! Japanese can deduct an certain amount of the house for 30years until the value reaches you bet it Zero, after that technically “only the land has value”. If you buy a used house, you can’t deduct any of the value. After that it’s cheaper for the Japanese to build a new house and start the process again. zero interest, declining population, no demand the price go down even more. They house joinery is not make to be torn down, it’s made without nails to be able to handle the earthquakes and settle down again. You need to do a deeper research. New houses in Japan are not much cheaper than in US, you would likely pay the same amount per area, Japanese don’t build 5000sqft homes to brag about it. The house is smaller, that’s why it’s cheaper…

Our houses cost a lot of money. And I bought a older house and I haven’t spent my entire time for the past 20 years redoing it everything, it is mess up. It adds up that up, etc..

Do any Japanese homes in rural areas come with acerage? Like upto 3.5 hectares?

You should have covered Japan’s Long Term Quality Housing program.

When you live in a country that has a lot of earthquakes and volcano eruptions, those natural events tend to destroy houses.

10:14 The elephant in the room is the WTC by that famous Japanese architect.