The Nikkei is reporting that commercial land prices in Japan have stopped falling for the first time in seven years and a strong recovery is now underway.
Read the article in full here.
As is usual in Japan, this is being felt most keenly in the major urban areas, where both commercial and residential real estate have seen two consecutive years of price rises and investment remains brisk.
An area of interest highlighted by the newspaper is the hotel industry, where a combination of growing foreign interest, relative cheap currency and the upcoming Olympics are combining to attract increased levels of tourism (for 2015 a record 15 million foreign visitors are expected to come to Japan).
We recently published a short paper on how migration to the central 23 wards of Tokyo from outside of the country is continuing to push the market for apartments in the metropolis, and this, combined with a continuing trend for single person households and steadily growing foreign interest, is seeing high demand for central Tokyo residential real estate. As the Nikkei article points concludes, this is something that is unlikely to dissipate anytime soon.
