Land in Tokyo cost an average of $1,000 per square foot in 2015. That’s up 5.8% from the previous year, according to the Tochidai real estate data website.
…Recent surges in construction costs and decades-long economic stagnation are also not helping those who want to build a home.
As a result, many of those who do are choosing to take the micro option.
Sanyon Yamagishi is one such individual. She’s in the process of building a 30-square-meter (322 square-foot) house with her husband on a small plot of land near central Tokyo.
Although her other half initially thought the area was too small to build a house, she states that the structure is “comfortable” and “enough for me.”
The man designing the home, architect Denso Sugiura, says he has designed 137 micro-homes in the past 20 years.
Sugiura also notes that women are often the driving force behind Japan’s surging number of micro-houses.
“As more women have jobs, they prefer to live closer to their office. They (have) begun to bring family homes closer to city center,” he said.
Read more http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/asia/tokyo-japan-micro-home/
