Saitama tops net inflow of residents, Hotel Grand Palace to suspend operations, and rental brokerages see drop in transactions. Below is a quick weekly summary of some of the recent goings-on in the Japanese real estate market.

Saitama tops net inflow of residents

Saitama Prefecture had a net inflow of 11,160 residents between April and November of 2020, putting it in top spot nationwide. The prefecture had 100,716 residents leave over that period, while 111,876 new residents moved in. Of those new residents, 47,968 were from Tokyo, 9,806 from Chiba, and 9,587 from Kanagawa. Although the southern part of Saitama, including Saitama City, is seeing population growth, the northern reaches are still suffering from a declining population.

Hotel Grand Palace to close in July

Hotel Grand Palace in Kudanshita, Tokyo, will suspend operations from July this year. The pandemic has caused a severe drop in revenue with guest numbers falling 70%. Approximately half of the hotel guests had been foreign tourists. Various cost-cutting measures were introduced but with demand not expected to return for the near future, the hotel has decided to shut its doors in six months. Hotel Grand Palace opened in 1972 as the sister-hotel to the Palace Hotel. It has 458 rooms, wedding and banquet facilities. In 1973, South Korean dissident leader Kim Dae-jung was kidnapped by the KCIA after leaving one of the hotel’s rooms.

Rental brokerages see drop in transactions in 2020

According to the Zenkoku Chintai Jutaku Shimbun (National Rental Housing Newspaper), the real estate brokerage that concluded the most rental leases across Japan in 2020 was Daito Kentaku Group with 227,706 leases across 424 of their shops. This is 2.4% less than the number of leases in 2019. In second spot was MiniMini with 145,496 leases across 232 shops, down 6.1% from 2019. Of the top 10, only 2 brokerages saw a year-on-year increase in transactions.

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