April 03, 2006

Real estate prices never fall


Oh, yes, they do.

Land prices in Japan continued to fall in 2005, but the pace of decline slowed for the third straight year and commercial-land prices in Tokyo and other big cities rose for the first time since 1990, in a sign that real-estate deflation is approaching an end, government data showed Thursday.

Overall land prices fell an average 2.8% last year, dropping for the 15th straight year, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in its annual land-price report.

However, that was slower than a 5% fall in 2004 and a 6.2% drop in 2003, as land prices are showing signs of bottoming out or rising in some urban areas, according to the report.

3 comments:

Joe said...

I'd much rather see a housing crash that reverts us back to the mean by 2007-2008 than a 15-year painful, torturous slide. On the flip side, a 15-year slide would definitely shake out the real estate industry and most likely cripple NAR.

Anonymous said...

In 1989, the value of the land in Tokyo alone was more than the value of the real estate in the entire United States. That was a capital 'B' BUBBLE!
joe logic, I don't think events can transpire fast enough in real estate. If there was a ticker at the bottom of ytour screen showing the prices of housing, then maybe. But sellers will be unwilling to lower asking prices, buyers will wait longer, sellers will increase incentives (to keep the asking price higher), buyers will wait even more...this will take some time to wring out.

Anonymous said...

Tokyo saw a real estate craze and then the sell off. More recently their population was slightly declining creating more vacancies. They are one fo the top five greatest economies in the world on a little sliver of islands. They have almost no military and a high standard of living. They bought companies in the US like 7-Eleven, fisheries in Alaska, and hotels in Hawaii. Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."