[Foreclosed] House in Chiba’s ‘Beverly Hills’
A 4-bedroom house in One Hundred Hills (Chiba Prefecture’s version of Beverly Hills) has been foreclosed on and will go up for public auction in May. The minimum bid is set at 51,656,000 Yen.
*Update: The winning bid was 65,126,000 Yen. Three bids were submitted and the winner was a corporate buyer.
One Hundred Hills is a high-end residential estate that was developed by Tokyu Land in the late 1980s. The first homes in the neighbourhood were between 400 ~ 500 sqm (4300 ~ 5380 sqft) in size and were priced from 500 million ~ 1.5 billion Yen when new. Tokyu had subdivided the 17 hectare estate into 60 lots and had sold 24 of the 49 homes they had built by the time the bubble burst. Read more
Historic Shinsaibashi Daimaru store to be demolished
J. Front Retailing recently announced plans to redevelop the 81-year old Daimaru Department Store in Shinsaibashi, Osaka.
The store was designed by US-born architect William Merrell Vories and completed in 1933. Design-wise, the building is considered to be the best department store in Japan. It is a well-known example of ‘Taisho Modern’ architecture which is a mix of art deco and neo-gothic styles. In 2003, it made the DOCOMOMO Japan list of the top 100 modern buildings in the country. Read more
New apartment prices in Sapporo at record high
The average price of a brand new apartment in Sapporo, Hokkaido, reached 32,082,000 Yen in 2013 - a level not seen since Japan’s bubble economy in the late 1980s. The rising prices have been brought on by the increasing cost of construction, an increase in the consumption tax rate which caused some last minute buying and an expansion in the tax reductions on home loans.
Industry insiders are expecting prices to continue to grow, but some are worried that the market could cool down if prices become unaffordable. Read more
Tohoku’s traditional homes slowly vanishing
Repair bills up to 100 million Yen or more
Yoichi Haryu, 57, owns a 2-storey home and storehouse in Wakabayashi-ku, Sendai City. The buildings date back to the late Meiji ~ early Showa era. The 2011 earthquake caused the beams to twist and bend and the wooden posts to twist and come unstuck.Read more