In an industry first, PanaHome is now offering a 9-storey home for landowners who want to maximize the use of their land.

The suggested layout for the ‘Vieuno9’ high-rise home includes retail space on the ground floor, office and rental apartments on the lower floors, and the owner’s residence on the upper floors. The steel-frame structure allows for ceiling heights of up to 4 meters on the ground floor and 3.14 meters on the top floor, with mid-floors having generous ceiling heights of 2.84 meters.

In 2016, housing starts for multi-storey dwellings (between 3 ~ 9 floors) reached 43,530 units nationwide, an increase of 7.8% from 2015. 82.5% of these homes were located in the Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka belt where land prices are typically high while lot sizes are small. The Tokyo metropolitan area accounted for 30.6% of these housing starts.

In Tokyo’s 23 special wards, total housing starts were up 1.3% from 2015, while starts for 3-storey homes were up 3.1%, 4 ~ 5-storey homes were up 7.5% and 6 ~ 9-storey homes were up 7.4%.

Seeing a potential opportunity in the market, PanaHome started offering multi-floor homes back in 2012 and claims the top share of the market for 4-storey+ homes. Home owners may be looking to better utilize their land by building bigger, while incorporating other uses such as a residence for inlaws, rental apartments or even retail space. The target clients for these homes are existing landowners looking to rebuild their old homes.

Of course, this type of multi-floor building is not going to be suitable for every piece of land. Zoning will be a big factor in determining whether a building over 2 or 3 stories is possible. In Category I and II Exclusively Low-Rise Residential Zones, for example, building heights are capped at 10 or 12 meters. Land zoned with a higher density is going to be much more expensive than a typical lot for a family home.

Tokyo, in particular, has strict slant restrictions which require buildings above a certain height to be slanted to allow either light or airflow to neighbours. In many cases this applies from the height of the 3rd floor, which is why many homes have slanted roofs on the 3rd floor. This is why few detached homes are over 3 storeys in height.

In July, PanaHome opened a 7-storey model home in their Kinshi Display Park in Sumida-ku, Tokyo. Over 350 groups visited the show room in the first two weeks. The model house has retail on the 1st and 2nd floors, an office rental space on the 3rd floor, two rental apartments on the 4th floor, and a personal residence for the owner on the 5th ~ 7th floors. The total construction cost, not including land, is estimated at around 300 million Yen (approx. 2.7 million USD). Rental income for the lower floors is estimated to bring in approximately 1.2 million Yen per month.

The 7-storey model home in Kinshi, Sumida-ku, Tokyo.

Source: ITmedia Business Online, August 31, 2017.

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