Yen Depreciation
The yen's 30%+ decline from 2022–2024 created a USD/EUR purchasing power advantage not seen in decades, drawing significant foreign capital into the Tokyo residential market.
Japan Residential Property Prices 2020–2025
An Analysis of 2.48 Million Official Transactions
2,247,230
Transactions Analyzed
47
Prefectures
FY2020–FY2025
24 Quarters
Data Source: MLIT (PDL 1.0) | Analysis & Insights: © Tatemono IQ · Updated April 2026
Market Overview
Japan's residential property market has entered a structural growth phase unlike anything seen since the pre-bubble era. After absorbing the COVID disruption faster than most global markets, national pre-owned condo medians have risen +21.4% from 2021 to 2025, driven by yen depreciation, foreign capital inflows, and persistent supply constraints in urban cores. Tokyo's gravitational pull on the surrounding Kanto region accounts for a disproportionate share of this recovery, while a 'selection era' has emerged in the broader market: hyper-convenient urban locations are posting record premiums as Japan's shrinking population concentrates capital where walkability and transit access are highest.
¥485,714/m²
Trending
National condo median (3-yr)
中古マンション等
+21.4%
Trending
Price change 2021→2025
National aggregateTokyo: +20.8% over same period
¥236,364/m²
Stable
Most affordable major market
Hokkaido
+165%
Premium
Station proximity premium
≤5 min vs 20+ min walk
What's Driving Prices
Foreign Buyer Demand
An estimated 27–40% of new condominium purchases in central Tokyo in 2024 involved non-Japanese buyers, up from single-digit percentages pre-2020.
Supply Constraints
New residential completions in Tokyo's 23 wards declined through 2020–2024 while demand surged, compressing available inventory and amplifying price pressure in the resale market.
Monetary Policy Divergence
While Western central banks raised benchmark rates aggressively in 2022–2024, the Bank of Japan held its ultra-loose policy stance. Domestic floating-rate mortgages remained at ultra-low levels — creating attractive carry conditions for international capital at a time when most global property markets faced rate-driven compression. The BOJ's historic rate normalisation beginning in 2024 bears watching, but real rates remain structurally low by global standards.
New-Construction Cost Spiral
A weak yen has amplified import costs for construction materials, while Japan's 2024 construction sector overtime reforms under the revised Labour Standards Act tightened skilled-labour supply across the industry. New condominiums in Tokyo's 23 wards averaged ¥137.84M in FY2025 — the third consecutive year above the ¥100M threshold. Priced-out domestic buyers increasingly pivot to pre-owned RC structures, driving resale demand independent of the foreign-buyer story.
Tokyo Concentration
The Tokyo Gravity Effect
67.6%
A national average masks Tokyo's outsized role. Greater Tokyo (1都3県 — Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba) comprises ~30% of Japan's population but commands approximately 67.6% of all pre-owned condo transaction value nationally.
67.6%
of national value
53.3%
of national volume
Greater Tokyo (1都3県) — Tokyo + Kanagawa + Saitama + Chiba
Tokyo's dominance is not incidental — it is the product of decades of deliberate infrastructure concentration, agglomeration economies that reinforce themselves with each corporate relocation, and BOJ-era liquidity that preferentially flowed to the most transparent and liquid urban property markets. The result is a market so deep and frequently transacted that international capital increasingly treats central Tokyo residential as a high-visibility, continuously-priced asset class with an exit market that functions even in downturns.
The gravity effect extends outward. Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba — the three prefectures forming the 1都3県 commuter ring — have seen price appreciation that closely tracks Tokyo's trajectory rather than their own demographic fundamentals. Commute time to central Tokyo remains a powerful pricing variable: the 1都3県 ring functions less as a distinct regional market and more as a series of concentric price bands radiating from the city centre.
The Walkability Premium
Station Proximity: Japan's #1 Asset Value Predictor
+165% premium
≤5 min vs 20+ min walk
Walk time to the nearest station is the single most predictive variable for residential asset value and long-term rentability in Japanese cities. An aging society with low urban youth car-ownership rates has structurally elevated transit access as the defining quality-of-life and liquidity metric. Properties within a 5-minute walk command a +165% median price premium over those 20+ minutes away — a gap that has widened consistently since 2020 as remote work flexibility and inbound investment both reinforced demand for the most walkable locations.
≤5 min — Luxury tier: highest liquidity, strongest rental yields, most resilient to demographic decline
6–10 min — Core market: competitive pricing, solid tenant demand across asset classes
11+ min — Steep liquidity penalties: extended time-on-market, discounted exit pricing, heightened demographic risk
The Selection Era
Regional Growth Divergence
Among the 47 prefectures, property values in top performers are accelerating while lower-growth regions face stagnation. This widening gap reflects market concentration in supply-constrained urban centers.
Top 5 Prefectures
- Niigata
- Nagano
- Oita
- Osaka
- Tochigi
+27.9%
Average growth (2021→2025)
Bottom 5 Prefectures
- Akita
- Aomori
- Shimane
- Yamanashi
- Ibaraki
-3.9%
Average growth (2021→2025)
Difference between top-5 and bottom-5 average growth rates
+31.9%pp spread
Understanding the Regional Growth Champions
Niigata (+33.1%) and Nagano (+29.2%) rank among the top-performing prefectures despite sparse urban density — an apparent paradox explained by two factors. Both prefectures started from a comparatively low 2021 base, so the percentage gain looks outsized even as the absolute price increase remains modest. Nagano's performance is also partly attributable to the Karuizawa and Hakuba resort markets, which have attracted domestic second-home buyers and inbound ski-resort investors at a pace that disproportionately inflates the prefecture's median. This is meaningful data, not noise — but it should not be generalised as a broad regional recovery signal.
Structural Polarization — Capital Chasing Convenience
Japan's population is contracting, but the real estate market is not declining uniformly — it is bifurcating. Capital is consolidating into hyper-convenient urban hubs where agglomeration effects, transit infrastructure, and shrinking average household sizes create durable demand. Meanwhile, prefectures without anchor cities or significant transit investment face stagnation or gradual price erosion. This dynamic will intensify over the next two decades as the working-age population decline accelerates.
Even within declining prefectures, micro-pockets adjacent to Shinkansen stations show price behaviour that mirrors urban cores rather than their surroundings — a reminder that prefecture-level averages obscure the municipality-level story.
Tatemono IQ's municipality-level analytics identify those bullet-train pockets and demographic outliers before they appear in headline indices.
Supply-Side Dynamics
New vs. Pre-Owned: Two Markets Diverging
The New-Construction Cost Ceiling
Import costs amplified by a weak yen, combined with Japan's 2024 construction sector overtime reforms under the revised Labour Standards Act, have pushed new residential construction costs to historic highs. New condominiums in Tokyo's 23 wards averaged ¥137.84M in FY2025 — the third consecutive year above the ¥100M threshold, and a price level that effectively prices out most domestic owner-occupiers.
The Pre-Owned Spillover Effect
Priced out of new construction, domestic buyers have pivoted to pre-owned RC (reinforced concrete) structures built under Japan's post-1981 New Anti-Seismic Code (shinseitaikō), which applies to buildings permitted from June 1982 onward — widely regarded as the structural safety threshold for residential real estate. This demand shift is the primary mechanical driver behind the pre-owned transaction data in this report: not merely investor speculation, but structural re-channelling of domestic housing demand.
Price Trends
Post-COVID Price Acceleration
Japan's pre-owned condominium market absorbed the 2020 disruption faster than most global markets. National median prices dipped 4.3% in FY2021 before recovering sharply through 2022. The acceleration from 2022 onward reflects three converging forces: a yen that declined 30%+ from 2022–2024 making Japanese assets cheaper in USD and EUR terms; foreign buyers estimated at 27–40% of new apartment transactions in central Tokyo by 2024; and historically low domestic mortgage rates sustaining local demand despite rising prices. Land prices rose for a fifth consecutive year in FY2025 — the fastest appreciation pace since 1991. Tokyo condos climbed +20.8% over four years (2021 to 2025) while the national median rose +21.4%, creating one of the sharpest metro/national divergences of the post-bubble era.
–4.3%
Peak COVID dip (FY2021)
+21.4%
National recovery (2021→2025)
+20.8%
Tokyo condo appreciation (2021→2025)
27–40%
Foreign buyer share, central Tokyo new condos (2024 est.)
National Condo Median ¥/m² — FY2020 to FY2025
Median · 3-year rolling window · MLIT reinfolib
Prefecture Rankings
Pre-owned Condominium Prices by Prefecture
Median ¥/m² · 3-year rolling window · Minimum 30 transactions · Source: MLIT reinfolib 取引価格情報
| Rank | Prefecture | Median ¥/m² | 2021→2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Niigata | ¥220,000 | +33.1% |
| 02 | Nagano | ¥353,846 | +29.2% |
| 03 | Oita | ¥231,579 | +26.9% |
| 04 | Osaka | ¥446,154 | +25.5% |
| 05 | Tochigi | ¥250,000 | +25% |
| 06 | Kagawa | ¥187,500 | +24.4% |
| 07 | Fukuoka | ¥341,176 | +22.3% |
| 08 | Tokyo | ¥950,000 | +20.8% |
| 09 | Gifu | ¥238,095 | +20% |
| 10 | Wakayama | ¥140,000 | +19.9% |
| 11 | Ishikawa | ¥223,529 | +18.8% |
| 12 | Shiga | ¥329,412 | +18.1% |
| 13 | Okayama | ¥285,714 | +17.3% |
| 14 | Nagasaki | ¥284,211 | +16.7% |
| 15 | Kanagawa | ¥520,000 | +16.5% |
| 16 | Chiba | ¥333,333 | +15.9% |
| 17 | Gunma | ¥213,393 | +14.8% |
| 18 | Okinawa | ¥457,143 | +14.6% |
| 19 | Saitama | ¥384,615 | +14.5% |
| 20 | Kagoshima | ¥314,286 | +14.3% |
| 21 | Nara | ¥212,500 | +13.4% |
| 22 | Kyoto | ¥435,294 | +13.1% |
| 23 | Hyogo | ¥341,176 | +12.5% |
| 24 | Iwate | ¥250,000 | +12.5% |
| 25 | Kumamoto | ¥228,571 | +12.5% |
| 26 | Miyazaki | ¥260,181 | +12.4% |
| 27 | Kochi | ¥242,857 | +11.8% |
| 28 | Toyama | ¥240,000 | +10.9% |
| 29 | Miyagi | ¥300,000 | +10.5% |
| 30 | Tottori | ¥240,000 | +10% |
| 31 | Fukui | ¥233,333 | +9.2% |
| 32 | Hokkaido | ¥236,364 | +8.9% |
| 33 | Hiroshima | ¥306,667 | +7.3% |
| 34 | Saga | ¥221,637 | +7.1% |
| 35 | Yamaguchi | ¥200,000 | +7.1% |
| 36 | Mie | ¥240,000 | +5.4% |
| 37 | Aichi | ¥280,000 | +4.3% |
| 38 | Shizuoka | ¥216,667 | +2.3% |
| 39 | Fukushima | ¥216,667 | +0% |
| 40 | Yamagata | ¥216,667 | -0.1% |
| 41 | Ehime | ¥213,333 | -0.4% |
| 42 | Tokushima | ¥178,947 | -0.5% |
| 43 | Ibaraki | ¥276,923 | -1.9% |
| 44 | Yamanashi | ¥181,818 | -3% |
| 45 | Shimane | ¥260,662 | -4% |
| 46 | Aomori | ¥173,333 | -4.5% |
| 47 | Akita | ¥182,576 | -6.2% |
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Methodology
- Buyer-reported survey data, ~8% sample rate of all residential transactions
- Individual addresses anonymized; district-level resolution only
- Minimum 30-transaction sample gate applied per prefecture per period
- Licensed PDL 1.0 (Public Data License) — freely republishable with attribution
Data Attribution
- Source
- 不動産情報ライブラリ (MLIT reinfolib)
- URL
- https://www.reinfolib.mlit.go.jp/
- License
- PDL 1.0
- Last updated
- April 2026
Period Anchoring
Why we anchor change metrics to FY2021
Year-over-year change metrics in this report anchor to FY2021, the post-COVID trough year — providing a cleaner read on the recovery period than a 2020-baseline comparison would. The chart shows the full FY2020–FY2025 data window so the FY2021 dip remains visible.
Why We Use Medians
Why our medians differ from index figures
Reinfolib transaction medians are raw price-per-m² aggregations across all unit sizes, building ages, and within-prefecture geography (e.g., Tokyo prefecture includes Tama region's lower-priced cities). Index figures (Tokyo Kantei 70m²-equivalent, BIS hedonic-adjusted) use regression-fitted methodologies that systematically produce higher headline numbers but smooth single-period transaction noise.
Both views are correct; they answer different questions. Tatemono IQ deliberately uses transaction medians because they reflect what buyers actually paid, not a model.
Licensing & Rights
Terms of Use & Fair Citation
This report and its unique visual analyses are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). You are free to download, share, and excerpt this material for non-commercial purposes, provided that clear, un-shortened attribution is given to Tatemono IQ with a link back to this original page. You may not use the material for commercial purposes or distribute modified versions. For commercial licensing, contact Tatemono IQ.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International LicenseCite This Report
Tatemono IQ. (2026). Japan Residential Property Prices Market Report. Retrieved from https://www.tatemonoiq.com/en/market-reports/japan-residential-prices