Society

Tokyo property prices near bubble-era levels

Feb 20 (Nikkei) - Rising resource costs, a worsening labor shortage and a flood of easy money are pushing property prices in Tokyo to near-historic levels.

Prices for new condos in the greater Tokyo area last year averaged 2.87 million yen ($25,974) per tsubo (3.3 sq. meters), according to data from Real Estate Economic Institute, a private research company. That price peaked at 3.08 million yen in 1990 before the collapse of Japan's asset bubble.

Property prices skyrocketed during Japan's asset bubble in the late 1980s. The bubble's collapse signaled the start of the country's long period of deflationary malaise, in which wage growth stagnated and consumption languished.

Japan's labor shortage is driving up construction companies' personnel costs, and raw material prices are rising. Increasingly fierce competition for land for construction is also pushing up prices.

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