Holiday home buyers drawn to Kyoto

Kyoto City is fast becoming a hotspot for out-of-towners buying holiday homes.

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New development in Niseko sees strong sales

Sales in a new resort project in Niseko are off to a strong start with all villa lots sold. ‘Intuition’ is a condo-hotel and holiday home resort development by Hong Kong developer Zekkei Properties. 

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Luxury villas planned for Miura waterfront

A waterfront district down in Kanagawa’s Miura Peninsula is being pushed as a potential luxury resort targeting wealthy foreigners. A current development proposal includes villas and high-end condominiums that could include their own berths for mega-yachts along with 20-minute access by helicopter from Tokyo. The villas could range in size from 340 ~ 1,120 sqm (3,658 ~ 12,000 sq.ft).

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Niseko's luxury hotel and villa boom continues

There is no end in sight to the current construction boom in the ski resort town of Niseko in Hokkaido, with a number of luxury resorts and private villas under development. Spacious homes and apartments can easily fetch upwards of several hundred million Yen (several million USD). Rising construction costs and a labor shortage, however, are putting a strain on developers.Read more


Desperate sellers in ski resort town forced to pay buyers to offload apartments

Some owners, in an attempt to offload their apartments in aging ski resort towns, are paying companies to take the properties off their hands. For companies offering this relatively new service, charging fees to the seller is how they balance the risk of holding a property that comes with high running costs and limited resale potential.

How it works

According to the website of a company that specializes in buying up resort apartments, they ask the seller to pay them enough to cover the following:

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Niseko luxury condominium/hotel opens this month

aya-niseko-2

AYA Niseko, a luxury ski-in ski-out condominium/hotel located on the Grand Hirafu Resort ski slope, opened its doors this month. The 79-unit building is already almost 90% sold out, with the final few apartments expected to sell over the ski season.

The majority of apartments were in the 88 ~ 90 sqm range and priced from 100 ~ 400 million Yen (approx. 850,000 ~ 3.4 million USD), while a 370 sqm penthouse, which has already sold, was priced at 600 million Yen (approx. 5.1 million USD). Apartment prices are similar to what can be found in central Tokyo.Read more


$100 million resort for Kobe’s Mount Rokko

Rokkosan Resort 7

Nagoya-based Resorttrust, Inc. announced plans to open a members-only resort hotel in Kobe’s Rokkosan area. “XIV Rokko Sanctuary Villa” will be a 48-room resort with Japanese restaurant, bar, spa, and shops. It is scheduled to open in March 2018.

The resort has been designed by KKS Group, a specialist architectural firm that has designed numerous hotels around the world including several Shangri-La and Hilton Hotels, the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel in Shibuya, and the Capitol Hotel Tokyu in Tokyo. The design of the hotel is said to be the ‘Imperial Modern’ style which can be seen in some of the old and grand estates in Japan from the early 1900s. Frank Lloyd Wright’s former Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and the former Maeda Residence in Meguro were said to be the inspiration behind the design.Read more