Home Buying Trends in Osaka and Kyoto

In a previous article, we looked at average home prices in Tokyo.

In this follow up, we’d like to cover these questions:

• What are the most popular areas for house and apartment buyers in the Kinki-region (Osaka, Kyoto, and the prefectures of Hyogo, Nara, Shiga, Wakayama and Mie) of Japan?
• What are the average contracted sales prices?

This article covers data for second-hand properties (apartments and detached houses) sold in 2014, as reported by the Real Estate Information Network System (REINS) for Kinki, Japan.

High Demand Areas

Kinki REINS ranked the top areas in the Kinki region based on the percentage growth in the number of completed sales contracts for 2014, compared to 2013, as reported by its member agents.

The most high demand areas (for both second-hand apartments and detached houses) were concentrated in Osaka City.

In terms of second-hand apartments,

• Kashihara City, in Nara prefecture, came in first, with a 32.9% annual growth in transactions
• Nishiyodogawa-ku, Osaka came in a close second at 32.1%.
• Third was Kyoto’s Minami-ku, at 30.8%.

The average contract price for a second-hand apartment (for the top ten high demand regions in Kinki, only) was 17,852,000yen (or about 149,800usd, at today’s exchange rate). For Kinki as a whole, the average contract price was 18,200,000yen. This compares to an average price of 27,890,000yen for a second-hand apartment in the Greater Tokyo region.

Click on the chart below for details on second-hand apartment data.

For second-hand detached houses, the top three areas were 1)

• Kita-ku, Sakai city (55.1% year-on-year growth in number of contracts)
• Higashisumiyoshi-ku, Osaka city (46.7%)
• Tondabayashi City in Osaka prefecture (43.5%).

The average contract price for a second-hand detached house (for the top ten high demand regions in Kinki, only) was 16,562,000yen. For Kinki as a whole, the average contract price was 18,230,000yen. This compares to an average price of 29,580,000yen for a second-hand detached house in the Greater Tokyo region.

Click on the chart below for details on second-hand detached house data.

Other Trends

The report also found that sales transactions for both second-hand apartments and houses tended to be concentrated in areas where there was a relatively high stock of properties, but that buyers tended to choose smaller properties (in terms of square meters) than the average of available stock.

In terms of second-hand apartments, buyers who bought in Osaka’s Fukushima-ku and Konohana-ku, (which were in the top ten high-demand areas) seemed to show a preference for properties built within the last five years. However, for Kinki as a whole, price seemed to be the biggest factor but other considerations (such as the year of construction) were also important in buyers’ decisions.

In terms of second-hand detached houses, in some areas, such as Kyoto’s Minami-ku, over half of transactions were carried out for properties built since the late 1990’s, but in other areas, especially in Osaka city, transactions were concentrated on properties built around the 1970’s. The report suggests that the biggest factor driving buying activity was sales price.

Source: REINS Kinki, 近畿圏不動産流通機構 市況レポート(Febuary 2015)