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The story
A thread titled “The Real Estate Industry Is Starting to Fall Apart,” posted on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G (livegalileo) board, reported falling prices for new and used condos in Tokyo alongside a crash in real estate stocks. Some posters noted that share prices are down 40-50% from their spring peak, and the term “residual-loan tower condo” (zankure tawaman — borrowing the slang for an auto loan’s remaining balance to describe buyers financing high-rise condos with multi-decade loans) got thrown around a lot. Posters were split on whether this decline reflects a structural trend driven by Japan’s falling birth rate or is just a temporary correction, with plenty of lingering skepticism rooted in past “it’s totally going to collapse” predictions that never came true.
What people said
Used condo prices in Tokyo falling
Real estate stocks crashing
LOL, “residual-loan tower condo” is savage
In that case, what happens if the buyer dies partway through the loan?
It's over once Chinese buyers pull out
Reminder: Japanese people are buying in too
or will the shady ones survive
Which is it gonna be?
The shady ones are probably just brokers who bought a contact list, cold-call people, and flip deals from one side to the other
Though if prices drop, their brokerage fees drop too
China's did blow up, so real estate predictions do come true sometimes
Japan's screwed this up multiple times before too
Multiple times? When, besides the bubble bursting?
It might've been Japan that taught China how to cook its books too — after the bubble burst, Japan moved factories to China and handed over the tech
Economic crises do the most damage
what a joke
Actually, even that's stopped now
'Temporary correction' (major real estate stocks down 40-50% since peaking in early spring)
yeahhh, about that
REITs haven't fallen nearly that much though
And with fixed-rate financing, total payments were 35 million yen ten years ago — now it's 80 million
Why didn't you guys just buy ten years ago?
I was 15 ten years ago, man
that's a bit much to ask
Fundamentally, nothing changes unless the birth rate goes up
With CPI at around 1.9%, there's no need to hike rates
but the idiot central bank raised them anyway
With the birth rate falling, the population aging, and the massive stock of property owned by baby boomers who settled in the cities about to hit the market — there's no way prices were going to keep rising
That's the scary thing about real estate bubbles: once you're caught up in one, you lose sight of even something this obvious
I'm out in the Tokyo suburbs (Tama area), and there are empty lots everywhere now
Yet condo prices keep rising
No matter how you look at it, that's just wrong
They can't stop the yen from weakening though…
If they force a rate hike, corporate bankruptcies rise and jobs disappear, which destabilizes government finances — and that just ends up weakening the yen anyway
It's a physical asset, so in the extreme case it could literally burn down and vanish
Stocks will never do that, and stocks have bigger price swings too
Real estate barely makes money while carrying huge risk
Yields aren't even that great either
I guess it's because you can rent it out and generate cash flow fairly easily
Apparently it's also because real estate gets favorable treatment for inheritance tax
Simply put, if you're paying hundreds of thousands of yen in rent anyway, you might as well buy a 100-million-yen-plus condo (okushon) — you get the mortgage tax deduction instead of just throwing that money away
LOL, a used one though — that's rough timing
The moment the government cracked down on resale, prices crashed — they're following the exact same path as Mercari resellers, lmao
And unlike Mercari scalpers making pocket change, these guys took out 50-year loans and went full-leverage flipping
Their faces must be dead white right now
Fifty years ago in 1975 there were 1.9 million births; in 2025 it's 670,000
That's a third
This country's future is guaranteed to be nothing but empty, vacant houses
https://imgur.com/StJbAIL.jpg
Some people argue that the more the population shrinks, the more it concentrates in cities
but honestly I think that's just hype to get people buying
People said Chinese buyers were going on a buying spree, but apparently the data shows they barely bought enough to have any real impact
It was speculative demand plus the real estate industry's own agenda
Once the government started prioritizing genuine housing needs and rolled out consumer protection policies, it all collapsed at once
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
“Zankure” is slang originally referring to the unpaid balance on a car loan; the term caught on in the thread after being applied to people buying tower condos with multi-decade loans. As for what drove real estate prices up, the thread raised two competing theories without settling on a main cause — a wave of buying by Chinese capital, versus speculation and industry maneuvering disconnected from real housing demand. It’s also easy to overlook that real estate stocks and J-REITs don’t always move in lockstep, so a drop in share prices doesn’t necessarily mean the whole housing market is falling. On the declining birth rate, there’s a persistent view that as long as population keeps concentrating in cities, it won’t simply translate into oversupply, leaving forecasts divided. On interest rates too, opinions split between those saying a hike is unnecessary with CPI around 1.9%, and those calling for a hike to counter the weak yen — with mortgage rate trends watched closely as a factor that will shape where prices head next.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Bad News] The Real Estate Industry Is Starting to Fall Apart.”
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