Land prices in central Tokyo are now at levels last seen in the mid-eighties. After a long slow climb during the decades of Japan’s economic miracle, prices exploded in the late eighties in the frenzy of the bubble economy. Over the following decade, prices collapsed by over 80%, touching a low in 2002;
The China Bubble: Economic Growth’s Last Stand? Oh No—Not Another Real Estate Bubble!
There is one more similarity between Japan and China that is worth mentioning. During the 1980s, real estate prices in Tokyo were jaw-dropping. In the Ginza district in 1989, choice properties fetched over 100 million yen (approximately $1 million U.S. dollars) per square meter, or $93,000 per square foot. Prices were only slightly lower in other major business districts in the city.
By 2004, values of top properties in Tokyo’s financial districts had plummeted by 99 percent, and residential homes were selling for less than a tenth their peak prices. Tens of trillions of dollars in value were wiped out with the combined collapse of the Tokyo stock and real estate markets during the intervening years;
Hence my comment that, "Over the following years real estate prices in Tokyo fell by an average of about 90%!"
Those who claim such a property collapse can't happen in China, or indeed here in Australia, do not understand the dynamics of a credit-fuelled speculative mania which inevitably leads to a deflationary collapse. The longer the bubble is sustained, the worse the final outcome.
