Condominium vacancy rate in 5 major cities in Japan

The number of vacant house in Japan is keep increasing, and in 2013, a survey showed that 13.5%, one in 7.5 houses, are vacant houses. The increasing vavant houses are thought to give out negative influence on other properties, leading to the lower property value.

Following figures show condominiums’ vacancy rate in 5 major cities. The city that has the most lowest vacancy rate is Tokyo (7.3%) followed by Fukuoka(9.4%), Sapporo and Nagoya(11%), and Osaka(14.7%). As you can see, the vacancy rate in Osaka has twice as high as that of Tokyo.

The area that has the lowest vacancy rate in Tokyo was Koutou-ku (江東区) with 3.3%, and the area with the highest vacancy rate in Tokyo was Setagaya-ku (世田谷区) with 12.8%.

In Sapporo, Kiyota-ku (清田区)had the lowest at 2.9%, and Higashi-ku (東区)had the highest at 16.2%.

In Nagoya, Nakagawa-ku (中川区) had the lowest at 5.5%, and Kita-ku (北区) had the highest at 15.5%.

In Osaka, Higashi Sumiyoshi-ku (東住吉区) had the lowest at 4.2%, and Naniwa-ku (浪速区) had the highest at 36.1%.

In Fukuoka, Hakata-ku (博多区) had the lowest at 4.8％, and Higashi-ku (東区) had the highest at 13.1%.

The vacancy rate is not relevant to population growth. For example, Chiyoda-ku(千代田区) in Tokyo has the second highest vacancy rate despite of the highest population growth rate. The reason that vacancy rate is not proportional to population growth is that developers construct buildings in central cities as population grows. On the other hand, developers do not have any plan to build new properties in the area with low population growth, so the vacancy rate does not go up.

What’s more, wooden condominium has much higher vacancy rate. That of Tokyo, Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka, were 19.0%, 26.4%, 33.9%, 44.3%, and 28.0% respectively.

Because of the aging and decreasing population, we need to pay attention to the high vacancy rate area before investing.

Source and figure retrieved from Tokyo Keizai Online

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