In early stage of the infection spread, COVID-19 was regarded as just another kind of influenza. Beyond our initial expectation, COVID-19 is giving serious/crucial damage to economy and society all over the world.
From viewpoint of a real estate appraiser, due to COVID-19, following movements are observed in real estate market of Japan.
* After the collapse of Japanese bubble economy in late 1990s, the traditional style family ‒ men work outside the home and women do the housework as a full-time housewife ‒ became obsolete. Recently two incomes family occupies the majority. In order to reduce commute hours and convenience of taking their child to and from nursery, these double income families purchased a house located in urban center of which asset value is said to be stable/high getting a heavy mortgage. Infection spread of COVID-19 began to alter this trend of the market. Rapid prevalence of remote work style and decline of household income (anxiety over the future) exert influence on market participants of housing market. There are people searching their house in suburbs where environment is nice and afford to buy a bigger house with home offices and larger yard.
* For introduction of remote work style and reduction in fixed cost, business people start to rethink the necessity of holding a large office in the center of Tokyo bearing expensive rent.
Many companies might introduce the hub and spoke model of offices. Decentralization of office (headquarter) might generalize. It is possible that some manufactures shift their hub to regional cities of which cost is much lower than crowded/risky Tokyo.
* As for commercial district, so far centers of Tokyo having a huge draw are prime locations (with awfully high rent). Rent of suburban road-side location and location in residential areas are set to be much lower than that. However, people tend to avoid to take crowded train to go to the central Tokyo. It is possible to reprice rents of prime locations. Crash of restaurant business and bankruptcy of apparel companies might alter the landscape of commercial district in Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya etc.
At present, not only real estate but also whole socio-economy entered into crucial transitional phase since defeat of WW-2. Beyond 30 years of lull period of Heisei era (1989 – 2019), we can say that times goes into the chaotic phase. As one of business persons living in this complicated/fast moving world, I am always seeking a solution what things are going on / what will happen next and exchange information/idea with business persons.
Japan is an island nation located in far east Asia. It has the rich history of 2600 years and unique culture/customs. It is still a great nation having 3rd largest economy in the world and population of approx. 126,000,000. It is possible to live and work only with Japanese language.
Then, even in todayʼs internet world, due to special language and culture, barriers are high especially in real estate industry where bureaucracy dominates. As structure of its language is completely different from that of English, transmission of real estate information has not been done sufficiently. In this web site, although there are limitation of knowledge / idea of myself, We deliver real estate related information of Japan. we would like to share hints with you to think about our future.
About Logo of SGN
A bat is symbol of happiness in China because pronunciation of ʻbian fuʼ (bat in Chinese) is same as that of happiness (xing fu). You can find pattern of bats in costume of Chinese emperor. Also, with ultrasonic wave radar, a bat flies freely in complete darkness and catches a thing. We consider that s bat is apt for the symbol of this small web site ‒ in unseen situation, collecting useful information and share with you.
We got inspiration of the logo design from traditional family emblems which is one of ultimate in Japanese design. The background pattern of the logo represents SGN (Small Great News on Real Estate JAPAN).
