>Housing in Tokyo is not that expensive.
As compared to what? Commercial property in Manhattan?
I thought the same thing as well. Everyone I have ever known who lived in Tokyo commented on how expensive it was.
I lived there for 10 years.
Home owning is out of the question for the vast majority so the two most expensive costs in life are the apartment and the auto. Coming in a close third is the cost of a parking space for a car.
My daughter and family pay roughly $1500 monthly for a two bedroom 4th floor flat, nice but nothing special. It is about a 10 minute walk from Tokyo's equivalent of Times Square.
Try renting a broom closed for that in central Manhattan. Plus Tokyo is once of the nicest, safest big cities in the world. Especially compared to New York, even when Rudi Giuliani and Ed Koch were mayors.
Housing isn’t that expensive in Japan because housing in Japan is SMALL...
I read an article YEARS ago where a woman needed to widen her driveway 8 inches, and it cost her well over a million dollars just for the land.
Prices like that are not conducive to low, or even reasonable rents.
I call BS on this article.