An Analysis of 326,604 Pre-Owned Condominium Transactions Across Japan's Six Major Cities
Data Source: MLIT (PDL 1.0) | Analysis & Insights: © Tatemono IQ · Updated June 2026
Between 2020 and 2025, Japan's six major designated cities experienced a stark structural bifurcation in pre-owned condominium prices. While Tokyo's 23 wards maintained an absolute premium — ending 2025 at a median of ¥1,062k/m² (over four times Sapporo's median) — the narrative of momentum belongs to the tier-1 regional powerhouses. Osaka (+25.5%) and Fukuoka (+26.2%) led all markets in five-year growth. Conversely, secondary markets reached an affordability ceiling by 2024: Nagoya and Sapporo both retraced from their 2024 peaks, while Sendai completely flatlined. This analysis leverages 326,604 official MLIT transactions across major municipal ward areas.
The yen's 30%+ decline from 2022–2024 made Japanese real estate cheapest in USD/EUR terms in decades, drawing foreign capital predominantly to Tokyo and Osaka — the two most internationally-visible markets — and amplifying their price appreciation relative to regional cities.
Tokyo and Osaka benefit from irreplaceable agglomeration effects: headquarter concentration, international transit hubs, and high-density transit networks that sustain demand irrespective of macroeconomic cycles. Regional cities compete on affordability and lifestyle, not agglomeration.
Central ward land in Tokyo and Osaka is structurally supply-constrained — buildable parcels are scarce and redevelopment cycles are long. Fukuoka and Sapporo have experienced faster supply absorption because their core areas are smaller and demand surged faster than new supply could follow.
The Bank of Japan's ultra-loose policy anchored domestic floating-rate mortgages near zero through 2023, fuelling nationwide demand. The interest rate normalisation initiated in 2024 has triggered an immediate divergence: while capital-rich buyers in Tokyo and Osaka absorbed the shift, secondary markets — Nagoya, Sapporo, and Sendai — cooled or declined in 2025, signalling higher price sensitivity to credit tightening among locally-leveraged domestic buyers.
A weak yen has amplified import costs for construction materials across all six cities. In Tokyo and Osaka, soaring new-build prices have channelled domestic buyers into the pre-owned market, driving resale prices upward. In Sapporo and Fukuoka, this same supply-side inflation has restricted affordable new-build starts, forcing local demand into the established transaction market and keeping resale pricing resilient through 2024 despite mounting credit headwinds.
Tokyo's 23 special wards steadily climbed from ¥914k/m² in 2020 to ¥1,062k/m² in 2025 (+16.1%), but the highest rate of capital appreciation occurred in Japan's secondary commercial hubs. Osaka surged +25.5% to ¥613k/m², while Fukuoka led all six cities with a +26.2% increase to ¥438k/m². Notably, Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Nagoya all experienced a synchronised dip in 2021 before their recoveries accelerated through 2024 — a pattern consistent with a macro-systemic liquidity shock followed by an asset-inflation-driven rebound cycle. Nagoya ended the five-year period up just +2.9% after dropping from its 2024 peak. Sapporo remained Japan's most affordable major market at ¥250k/m², though alongside Nagoya it showed signs of exhaustion, correcting downward from its own 2024 peak.
Median · Annual · Ward-aggregated · MLIT reinfolib · Min. 30 transactions
All six cities use ward-level aggregation (政令指定都市区部). Tokyo = 23 special wards (東京都区部). Data paths represent continuous annual market activity across all key city zones.
Median ¥/m² · Latest year · Ward-aggregated · Minimum 30 transactions · Source: MLIT reinfolib 取引価格情報
| Rank | City | Median ¥/m² | 2020→2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Tokyo | ¥1,061,538 | +16.1% |
| 02 | Osaka | ¥613,333 | +25.5% |
| 03 | Fukuoka | ¥437,500 | +26.2% |
| 04 | Nagoya | ¥342,857 | +2.9% |
| 05 | Sendai | ¥309,091 | +12.9% |
| 06 | Sapporo | ¥250,000 | +17.6% |
Tatemono IQ users get municipality and ward-level breakdowns, demographic projections through 2050, and AI-powered property analysis built on this data.
Start Free TrialThis report anchors growth metrics to FY2020, the year the report series begins. Unlike the national residential report (which uses FY2021 to measure the post-COVID recovery), the city comparison is designed to show the full five-year arc across all six cities on equal terms. Every city in this report exhibits deep market liquidity and robust sample density in FY2020, ensuring the 2020 baseline provides a statistically sound, apples-to-apples comparison across all six major markets.
Tatemono IQ transaction medians represent raw price-per-m² aggregates across all unit sizes, building ages, and micro-geographies within each city's ward area. In contrast, institutional index figures (such as Tokyo Kantei's 70m²-equivalent baseline) use hedonic regression models designed to smooth out single-period transaction noise. While index models yield higher headline figures by filtering out compact units, Tatemono IQ uses raw transaction medians because they accurately map actual transaction liquidity — reflecting the exact capital outlays deployed by buyers in the market.
For Tokyo specifically: our median includes the significant volume of high-yield compact studio and one-bedroom units common in the 23 wards. This produces a lower absolute price point than a normalized 70m² family-condo index, but offers a truer, unfiltered view of total market velocity — the actual prices at which units transacted across the full spectrum of buyer activity.
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International LicenseCite This Report
Tatemono IQ. (2026). Tokyo vs. Regional Cities: Condo Price Comparison 2020–2025. Retrieved from https://www.tatemonoiq.com/en/market-reports/tokyo-vs-regional-cities