So, Who's Buying an $800k Used Tokyo Apartment?

Sellers in central Tokyo are actually having to cut prices on their million-dollar apartments.

Okay, so the headline everyone's writing is that a 70-square-meter used apartment in Tokyo now costs, on average, ¥128 million. That's about $795,000. Which, yes, is completely bonkers—a 27% jump from this time last year. But that's not actually the interesting part.

The Numbers Are Wild

The real insanity is in the dead center of the city. In places like Chuo and Minato wards, that same apartment is now going for an average of $1.16 million. I've lived here for three years and I honestly don't know who is buying these.

Even in the 'cheaper' spots south and west, like Shinagawa or Setagaya, prices shot up almost 26%. A normal place there will set you back around $660,000. It feels like the entire city just decided to add a zero to everything overnight.

But Wait, It's Cracking?

And yet. The research company that put out these numbers, Tokyo Kantei, slipped in a little detail everyone else seems to be ignoring. Some of those super-expensive properties in the city center are starting to sit on the market. They're struggling to find buyers.

Sellers are actually having to adjust their prices *down*. So after all this hype, we're seeing the first tiny sign that maybe, just maybe, there's a ceiling to how much people are willing to pay for a 30-year-old box in the sky.

So What Happens Now

Then there's the big elephant in the room: the Bank of Japan. They finally nudged interest rates up last week for the first time in forever. It wasn't a huge hike, but it was a signal.

Nobody knows what this is going to do to the housing market. Will it cool demand? Will people who were on the fence about buying just give up entirely? Tokyo Kantei basically said everyone's just watching and waiting.

For the rest of us just trying to pay our rent in a slightly-less-than-a-million-dollar apartment, it's just another Tuesday in Tokyo, I guess. 🫠