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The story
Daiwa House Industry has decided to scale back orders for newly built detached houses, setting a policy that limits custom home sale prices to ¥50 million and up. The company will concentrate its sales operations in urban areas like Tokyo and Osaka, withdrawing from 23 prefectures. Soaring material and labor costs have eroded profitability in its domestic housing business, prompting a push to raise unit prices and shore up earnings. On 5ch, while some voiced sentiments like “the era of ordinary people being able to buy a house is over,” the thread developed into a practical discussion comparing prices and specs with other builders like Ichijo Komuten and Sekisui House, the differences versus spec-built (tatsuuri) or build-to-order-condition homes, and whether single-story or two-story houses offer better value.
Daiwa House Industry will scale back orders for newly built detached houses. Custom home sale prices will be limited to ¥50 million and up. The company will concentrate its sales functions in urban areas such as Tokyo and Osaka, withdrawing from 23 prefectures. Its domestic housing business has seen profits squeezed by rising material and labor costs, and it is rushing to improve earnings by raising unit prices.
High interest rates and inflation are weighing down housing demand, while labor shortages in the construction industry are constraining home sales and construction activity. Major nationwide homebuilders are moving to fundamentally overhaul their business structures…(continues in the paid edition, 1,308 characters remaining)
Nikkei, September 3, 2026, 18:00 (Updated September 3, 2026, 19:33)
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
What people said
Isn't Ichijo getting pricier too because of the weak yen?
Still, I think it's better value for money than other homebuilders.
Ichijo Komuten builds sturdy houses, but the design is really boxy/rigid.
No rounded edges, so if you stub your little toe on a corner you're headed to the hospital.
Also the flooring quality is way below Sekisui, Daiwa, or Sumitomo Forestry.
You can't compare Uniqlo to Louis Vuitton lol
You can just add the upgrade option.
When we built ours we went with the "Live Natural Premium" solid sawn-board flooring — swapping the flooring on both the 1st and 2nd floors cost about an extra ¥500,000.
Satisfaction level is night and day, so it's absolutely worth changing.
Whole-house floor heating plus solid wood flooring feels amazing when you lie down on the floor in winter.
Damn, you're loaded.
Jealous.
Oh man, you really went and did it (lol)
No matter how much you add or multiply zero, it's still zero.
Come on, that can't be right…
Even at the lowest estimate you'd work 40 years, so if ¥50 million were your lifetime income, that'd mean an annual salary of just ¥1.25 million.
So it's a full withdrawal from Hokkaido, Tohoku, Koshinetsu, and Hokuriku?
Strange that some of Shikoku is staying though —
Guess they just don't want to build cold-climate spec houses.
I'm out in the sticks in snow country, and when heavy snow piles up high on the roof it comes crashing down all at once.
If you're standing underneath you'd get seriously hurt, and I'm always nervous it'll smash the siding or windows lol
It's cost-cutting, duh
I think it's because construction work grinds to a halt once it snows.
I wouldn't live in a danchi (public housing block) even if you paid me.
Why not? Have you never lived in an apartment?
In college I only ever lived in a studio apartment.
Kodan housing means danchi, right?
I wouldn't want to live in a place like that.
Something about it just feels gloomy.
If it's a municipal danchi that's been properly renovated, they've done seismic reinforcement and added elevators, and the interiors are clean.
There's usually a supermarket nearby too.
Though surprisingly there are conditions — like your income has to be below a certain level, or you need 3+ years of residency in that municipality.
Danchi housing was way cheaper than an apartment ☺
The soundproofing was solid.
Back when the going rate for a 3LDK out in the countryside was ¥85,000, I got burned twice by noisy apartments. That's no good 😣. I wonder if upscale apartments don't have noise problems — never lived in one so I wouldn't know.
It's just custom-order homes that are expensive.
If you go with a catalog type where you pick from preset layouts, you get less freedom but it's still relatively affordable.
> If you go with a catalog type where you pick from preset layouts, you get less freedom but it's still relatively affordable
Slightly different point, but build-to-order-condition (kenchiku-jōken-tsuki) homes are basically spec-built houses (in practice you can only change things like exterior color or interior fixtures), so you can build one for just a bit more than a spec-built home.
Though spec-built homes themselves used to run around ¥15-20 million not too long ago — now they seem to be topping ¥20 million.
Even that has shot up over the past 3-4 years.
A double whammy of soaring material costs (weak yen) and labor shortages
has pushed the per-tsubo price up by ¥200,000-300,000.
If I'd picked the top-of-the-line kitchen, bath, and toilet fixtures it probably would've added another ¥20 million.
You're loaded, man.
Well, Sekisui House is on the pricier side, so…
Even a mild stroke and you won't be able to climb to the 2nd floor on your own anymore.
Aren't kids' rooms usually on the 2nd floor lol
Or are you planning not to have kids?
Even among households with kids, more couples are building single-story houses these days with the future in mind.
But between a single-story house and a full two-story house,
for the same total floor area, the full two-story one is actually cheaper to build,
since it needs a smaller foundation and roof.
Only rich people can afford to build single-story houses.
You need more land, and the structure itself costs more since the roof and foundation are bigger.
My image of who builds single-story homes is childless couples who don't need much floor space.
The balance between insulation performance and price is really good.
They've got a product lineup ranging from cheap to expensive,
and their sturdiness is top-class.
On the flip side, the standard flooring is built cheap since it's meant to be pulled up for maintenance anyway.
No energy or money to fix it.
Just fix it yourself.
Just be careful not to fall off.
Just throw a blue tarp over it.
Yeah, the risk is high — I wish flood countermeasures like Ichijo's would become standard.
Same here —
though installing a lift to get up to the 2nd floor once you're older is also an option.
That just means you picked the wrong plot of land.
you'll spend another ¥10 million beyond the house itself.
Plus they're weak against typhoons.
That's where container houses come in.
Background and Key Points
The 23 prefectures Daiwa House is withdrawing from include many cold-climate, heavy-snowfall regions such as Hokkaido and Tohoku, suggesting that the cost burden of snow removal and snow-resistant specifications influenced the withdrawal decision. Meanwhile, the per-tsubo price of custom-built homes has risen by roughly ¥200,000-300,000 over the past 3-4 years, driven by the simultaneous pressures of yen-weakness-driven material cost increases and labor shortages in construction. On the thread, people with actual home-building experience shared concrete accounts of how the total cost can swing by several million yen depending on options like flooring and kitchens. Note, however, that the original article is subscriber-only, so details on the 23 prefectures being exited and Daiwa House’s future earnings targets can only be confirmed via the original source.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread “Daiwa House Scales Back New-Build Orders — Minimum Price Now ¥50 Million Amid Cost Inflation.”
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