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SUMMARY
Tokyo home prices are still going up overall, but the market has clearly lost momentum and some resale segments are already slipping month to month.
The cleanest split is between annual and short-term data. Existing-condo transaction prices in the 23 wards are still 2.7% above a year ago, while Tokyo Kantei’s standardized 70 m² resale price has now fallen for two months.
Central Tokyo is where buyer resistance is showing up first. Prices there have declined for several months, listings are increasing and more sellers are revising their asking prices after a long period when higher prices were easier to push through.
The 23 wards are holding up much better than Greater Tokyo. Resale-condo transaction prices per square metre are still rising inside the wards, while the wider metropolitan market has already recorded three consecutive annual declines.
New condos remain a different market altogether. The first-half average in the 23 wards reached ¥142.49 million, but luxury launches and project mix can move that headline number sharply, so it should not be treated as the price trend for a normal Tokyo home.
The slowdown is showing up more clearly in activity than in headline prices. July resale-condo transactions in the 23 wards were down 17.2% year over year while inventory across Greater Tokyo rose 5.5%, which suggests buyers are refusing prices before sellers are fully cutting them.
Land is still providing a strong floor under the market. Residential land rose across every Tokyo ward, although Minato, Taito and Shinagawa are appreciating much faster than the cheaper outer wards and the Tama area.
Higher mortgage rates are now biting at exactly the wrong time for buyers. Even modest rate increases become meaningful when a normal family-sized apartment can require a mortgage above ¥100 million.
Rents are rising too, which supports values, but not enough to make Tokyo condos obviously cheap as investments. A 70 m² resale apartment priced around ¥127 million and rented at current Tokyo Kantei levels produces only about a 3.4% gross yield before costs.
The market therefore looks more like a plateau with local corrections than the start of a broad crash. Tokyo is still more expensive than a year ago, but buyers can no longer assume that every extra month of waiting will make the same property more expensive.
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Are Tokyo home prices still going up today?
Tokyo home prices are still higher than a year ago, although the latest data show that the rise has clearly lost momentum.
Several parts of the market are still posting annual gains. According to REINS, the price per square metre of existing condos sold in Tokyo’s 23 wards was 2.7% higher year over year in July. Official residential land values across the 23 wards rose 9.0% in the latest annual assessment. New condos are even more expensive: the Real Estate Economic Institute put the first-half average in the 23 wards at ¥142.49 million, up 9.1% from a year earlier.
The short-term picture is different. Tokyo Kantei’s standardized price for a 70 m² resale condo in the 23 wards fell 0.8% in June and another 0.1% in July, reaching ¥127.24 million. June ended 25 straight monthly increases.
So if someone bought a typical Tokyo property a year ago, its market value is probably higher today. If the question is whether prices are still climbing every month at the pace we saw before, the answer is increasingly no.
| Tokyo housing indicator | Latest level | Latest change | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| New condo, 23 wards | ¥142.49m average | +9.1% YoY | New-build prices still very strong |
| Existing condo, 23 wards | ¥1.358m/m² | +2.7% YoY | Actual resale prices still rising |
| 70 m² resale condo, 23 wards | ¥127.24m | -0.1% MoM | Asking-price momentum has stalled |
| Residential land, 23 wards | — | +9.0% YoY | Land is still rising broadly |
Why do some Tokyo condo prices look like they are falling now?
Some Tokyo condo prices really are falling month to month now, especially in the expensive central market where sellers pushed prices hardest.
Tokyo Kantei’s 70 m² resale-condo index for the 23 wards dropped 0.8% in June and 0.1% in July. The June fall was the first after 25 consecutive monthly increases. In central Tokyo, the same series had already fallen for three months by July.
The more revealing detail is what is happening underneath the headline price. Tokyo Kantei reported a growing number of properties coming onto the market in central areas, while more than half of listings in its earlier central-Tokyo reading had undergone a price revision.
Owners could previously raise asking prices and still find buyers quickly enough to keep the market moving. Lately, more sellers are discovering that the next buyer will not automatically accept another increase.
We therefore have an early price adjustment in part of the resale market, rather than evidence that Tokyo housing as a whole has already turned down.
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Are resale condos in Tokyo’s 23 wards actually getting cheaper?
Resale condos in Tokyo’s 23 wards are still more expensive than a year ago when we look at completed transactions.
REINS recorded an average transaction price of ¥1.3577 million per square metre in the 23 wards in July, 2.7% above the previous year. That annual increase has continued even while Tokyo Kantei’s standardized asking-price index has slipped for two months.
The difference between the two datasets is useful. Tokyo Kantei tracks seller asking prices adjusted to a standard 70 m² unit. REINS tracks actual deals. Sellers have started trimming expectations in some areas, but buyers are still completing purchases at higher prices per square metre than they did a year ago.
The wider Greater Tokyo numbers are already weaker. REINS reported that the average resale-condo transaction price per square metre across the whole metropolitan region was 1.5% lower year over year in July, the third consecutive annual decline. The 23 wards are holding up much better than the suburbs taken together.
That gap is one of the clearest things happening in Tokyo housing now: the core is still appreciating annually, while weakness has already appeared when we zoom out.
| Resale condo measure | Latest move | Comparison | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23-ward transaction price/m² | +2.7% | YoY | Still rising |
| 23-ward standardized 70 m² price | -0.1% | MoM | Second monthly decline |
| Greater Tokyo transaction price/m² | -1.5% | YoY | Third annual decline |
| Central Tokyo standardized price | Down | 3 months | Clearest local cooling |
Is central Tokyo finally getting cheaper?
Central Tokyo is starting to get cheaper at the margin, but buyers should not confuse a few monthly declines with a return to old price levels.
The expensive central wards led much of Tokyo’s earlier surge, so they are also where affordability resistance is showing up first. Tokyo Kantei recorded three consecutive monthly declines in central Tokyo by July, alongside more listings and more price revisions.
Those declines come after an extraordinary rise. A standardized 70 m² condo across the 23 wards still costs about ¥127 million in Tokyo Kantei’s latest reading. Premium properties in Minato, Chiyoda, Shibuya and parts of Chuo routinely sit far above that level.
A 5% reduction on a ¥200 million apartment removes ¥10 million from the asking price, which looks dramatic in nominal terms. The same apartment could still be worth vastly more than it was several years ago.
Central Tokyo has reached the point where buyers are pushing back. That is already enough to slow the market, even without anything resembling a broad collapse.
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Are new condos in Tokyo still getting more expensive?
New condos in Tokyo are still getting more expensive, and this remains the part of the market where the headline numbers look most extreme.
The Real Estate Economic Institute calculated an average first-half new-condo price of ¥142.49 million in Tokyo’s 23 wards, up 9.1% from a year earlier. Across Greater Tokyo, the average reached ¥101.35 million, up 13.1% and above ¥100 million for the first time in a first-half period.
Those averages need some caution because the mix of developments can move them sharply. Chiba provides a good example: its first-half average jumped 56.8% to ¥89.97 million when expensive projects entered the sample. Ordinary homes across Chiba obviously did not appreciate by almost 57% in six months.
Tokyo has the same mix effect, especially when high-end towers launch in Minato, Chuo or major redevelopment areas.
Even after stripping out some of that distortion, new-build pricing is clearly under upward pressure. Developers are paying more for land, labour and materials, and they increasingly target buyers who can afford premium units rather than trying to recreate the cheaper mass-market condo supply of the past.
Is Tokyo’s housing boom mostly about luxury condos?
Luxury condos make Tokyo’s price boom look more spectacular than it really is, but the rise reaches well beyond luxury towers.
The easiest way to see this is to compare different assets. New condos in the 23 wards averaged ¥142.49 million in the first half of the year. Existing condos sell at far lower absolute prices, yet REINS still recorded a 2.7% annual increase in transaction prices per square metre in the wards. Residential land rose 9.0% across all 23 wards.
Detached housing is also holding up. Tokyo Kantei’s July data showed existing-house prices rising in the 23 wards even though the Greater Tokyo average dropped 3.5% from the previous month. New detached houses in Tokyo also continued to rise.
The scale of appreciation is therefore very different depending on what someone buys, but Tokyo’s market cannot be explained by luxury towers alone.
What luxury projects do is distort the average upward. A ¥300 million tower unit has far more impact on a citywide new-condo average than on the price of a normal resale apartment in Nerima or Edogawa.
| Segment | Current direction | What drives it most |
|---|---|---|
| New central condos | Strongly up | Luxury supply, land and construction costs |
| Existing 23-ward condos | Up YoY, softer MoM | Resale demand and seller expectations |
| Detached houses | Generally firm in Tokyo | Land value and family demand |
| Residential land | Broadly up | Scarcity and strong urban demand |
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Are home prices rising across Tokyo, or only in the expensive wards?
Home prices are rising across much of Tokyo, but central and well-connected neighbourhoods are pulling away from the cheaper edges of the city.
Official land prices show this unusually clearly. Residential land rose in every one of Tokyo’s 23 wards for the fifth straight year. Minato increased 16.6%, Taito 14.2% and Shinagawa 13.9%. At the other end, Katsushika rose 5.6%, Edogawa 5.7% and Nerima 6.2%.
That is a wide spread. Minato land is rising at nearly three times the rate of Katsushika.
The same gradient continues outside the wards. Residential land across the Tama area rose 3.9%. Kokubunji gained 7.2%, Kunitachi 7.1% and Tachikawa 7.0%, while Akiruno and Hinode managed only 0.4%.
Tokyo therefore has a broad upward land market with very different speeds. Proximity to major employment centres, strong rail access, redevelopment and scarcity still command an increasingly large premium.
| Area | Residential land change |
|---|---|
| Minato | +16.6% |
| Taito | +14.2% |
| Shinagawa | +13.9% |
| 23 wards overall | +9.0% |
| Nerima | +6.2% |
| Edogawa | +5.7% |
| Katsushika | +5.6% |
| Tama area | +3.9% |
Are Tokyo buyers finally refusing to pay higher prices?
Tokyo buyers are clearly becoming more reluctant to chase higher prices, and transaction volume is now the strongest evidence of that change.
REINS recorded 1,509 existing-condo transactions in the 23 wards in July, 17.2% fewer than a year earlier. Sales had fallen year over year for seven consecutive months.
Yet the average transaction price per square metre in the wards was still up 2.7%.
That combination says a lot. Sellers have largely maintained high prices, while fewer buyers are agreeing to them.
The wider market is showing the same tension more strongly. Greater Tokyo resale-condo transactions fell 8.6% year over year to 3,638. Inventory rose 5.5% to 47,151 units, and new listings increased 5.7%.
There is also a large gap between what sellers want and what buyers actually pay. REINS data put the average asking price of newly registered Greater Tokyo resale condos at ¥68.34 million, while the average completed transaction was ¥52.67 million. The gap was roughly ¥15.7 million, or about 30% of the completed price.
That gap is exactly where negotiations, slower sales and future price cuts tend to emerge.
| Greater Tokyo resale condos | Latest reading | YoY change |
|---|---|---|
| Completed sales | 3,638 | -8.6% |
| 23-ward completed sales | 1,509 | -17.2% |
| Available inventory | 47,151 | +5.5% |
| New listings | 16,474 | +5.7% |
| Average completed price | ¥52.67m | -0.7% |
| Average new-listing price | ¥68.34m | +20.5% |
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Does weaker demand mean Tokyo home prices are about to fall?
Weaker demand makes a Tokyo price correction more plausible now, but sellers have not yet been forced to cut enough for a broad downturn to appear.
As seen above, 23-ward condo transactions fell 17.2% while actual prices per square metre still rose. The first adjustment is happening through volume: buyers walk away, properties sit longer and owners wait.
The next stage depends on how patient those sellers can remain.
Japan does not currently have the same setup as housing markets where variable mortgage payments suddenly doubled and heavily leveraged owners had to sell quickly. Many Tokyo owners can simply leave a property on the market longer if bids disappoint them.
That delays price discovery. Inventory can climb for months before sellers accept that the clearing price is lower.
The risk has nevertheless moved. A year or two ago, betting on near-term Tokyo price declines meant fighting a market with rising transactions, rising asking prices and very little visible seller resistance. Today, transactions are falling, inventory is climbing and some central sellers are already revising prices.
Are higher mortgage rates starting to hurt Tokyo home prices?
Higher Japanese mortgage rates are now making expensive Tokyo homes harder to buy, even though rates remain low by international standards.
Variable mortgage rates that once looked almost negligible have moved higher as the Bank of Japan has normalized monetary policy. Representative advertised variable rates at major banks are now around 1% or above for many borrowers, while long-term fixed borrowing costs considerably more.
The effect becomes meaningful because Tokyo prices have risen so far. On a ¥100 million mortgage over 35 years, moving from 0.5% to 1.0% adds roughly ¥23,000 to the monthly payment. Moving from 1% to 2% adds roughly another ¥48,000.
A buyer therefore faces two pressures at once: the apartment costs more and the money used to buy it costs more.
This is especially important for the upper-middle part of the Tokyo market, where buyers depend on salaries and mortgages rather than family wealth or large cash holdings. Those households can respond to higher rates by buying smaller, moving farther out or simply refusing the seller’s price.
The fall in transaction volumes suggests that some are already doing exactly that.
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Why can Tokyo home prices rise when Japan’s population is shrinking?
Tokyo home prices can keep rising because Japan is shrinking nationally while people continue to concentrate in the capital.
Tokyo’s population is currently above 14 million, and the 23 wards are around the 10-million mark. The capital continues to attract workers, students, companies and international residents even as many rural prefectures lose population.
Housing markets are local. An empty house in a shrinking provincial town does nothing to increase the number of apartments available near Ebisu, Shinjuku or Otemachi.
Jobs matter just as much. Tokyo concentrates a huge share of Japan’s high-paying corporate roles, universities, professional services and international business. People moving toward those opportunities create demand in the exact places where land is hardest to add.
The demographic argument against Tokyo property is therefore too broad. Japan’s national population decline is real, but the population is also redistributing toward the country’s strongest urban centres.
Are high construction costs keeping Tokyo condo prices up?
High construction costs are making cheaper new Tokyo condos increasingly difficult for developers to produce.
Labour shortages, higher wages and expensive construction materials have pushed Japanese building costs well above their pre-pandemic levels. Tokyo’s reinforced-concrete apartment construction indices remain around historically high levels.
Developers cannot solve that by simply charging less. They can shrink units, move to cheaper land, build more premium apartments or cancel projects that no longer make economic sense.
Supply data show how constrained that response has become. Greater Tokyo received 7,989 new condo units in the first half of the year, 0.8% fewer than a year earlier, while the average price reached a record ¥101.35 million.
Record prices would normally encourage a flood of new construction. Tokyo is getting fewer units instead.
That is one reason a large price collapse is harder to produce in the new-build market. A weak project may get delayed or redesigned before a developer willingly sells large numbers of units below replacement cost.
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Are Tokyo rents rising fast enough to justify today’s home prices?
Tokyo rents are rising, but apartment prices are still high enough that rental yields remain fairly thin.
Tokyo Kantei put the average rent for condominium units in the 23 wards at ¥5,157 per square metre in July, up 0.8% from the previous month and at a new high for the recent series.
For a 70 m² apartment, that works out to roughly ¥361,000 per month, or ¥4.33 million a year.
The same company’s standardized resale price for a 70 m² apartment was ¥127.24 million. Dividing the annual rent by the purchase price gives a gross yield of about 3.4%.
Actual net returns would be lower after management fees, repairs, property tax, vacancy and purchase costs.
Rent growth supports prices, but it does not make every Tokyo condo an obvious investment. The higher mortgage rates go, the more uncomfortable that 3%-to-4% gross yield range becomes for leveraged buyers.
Is Tokyo housing becoming unaffordable for normal local buyers?
Tokyo housing is becoming very difficult for ordinary local households to buy in the most expensive parts of the city, especially when we look at new condos.
An average new condo price of ¥142.49 million in the 23 wards puts the typical new unit far outside the reach of a single average salaried worker. Even with a 20% deposit, the buyer would need to finance roughly ¥114 million.
The resale market is cheaper but hardly cheap. Tokyo Kantei’s standardized ¥127.24 million price for a 70 m² 23-ward apartment still implies a mortgage above ¥100 million after a conventional deposit.
Tokyo has several groups capable of paying those prices: dual-income professional households, wealthy families, people using inherited assets, corporate buyers and foreign purchasers. That keeps the market functioning even when the median resident struggles to compete.
Affordability eventually shows up somewhere. Right now, it is showing up first through falling transaction volumes, longer marketing periods and more seller price revisions rather than through a dramatic fall in headline prices.
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What could actually make Tokyo home prices fall?
Tokyo home prices could fall if today’s slower demand turns into sustained excess supply, especially if higher rates or a weaker economy force more owners to sell.
The ingredients for a correction have started to appear. Resale inventory is rising. Transactions are falling. Central Tokyo asking prices have slipped for several months. Mortgage costs are higher than they were during the strongest phase of the boom.
Those trends alone may only create a flat market.
A deeper fall would probably need an additional shock: materially higher mortgage rates, a recession that hits employment and bonuses, a sharp reduction in investment demand, or enough new resale inventory that owners can no longer wait indefinitely for their target price.
Land and construction costs currently make that adjustment harder. Residential land is still rising across every ward, rents remain firm, and developers cannot cheaply replace existing stock with new housing.
For now, a slow grind looks more plausible than a sudden crash.
So are home prices in Tokyo going up or down?
Tokyo home prices are still up overall today, but the latest data show that the market has moved from a strong upswing into a much less comfortable plateau.
The annual numbers remain positive where Tokyo itself matters most. Existing-condo transaction prices per square metre in the 23 wards are 2.7% above last year. Residential land is up 9.0%. New-condo prices in the wards are up 9.1%.
Short-term resale momentum has already changed. Tokyo Kantei’s standardized 70 m² price has fallen for two months after 25 straight increases. Central Tokyo has declined for three months. REINS shows 23-ward condo transactions down 17.2%, while Greater Tokyo inventory has risen 5.5%.
Those figures point to a very specific conclusion. Tokyo has probably passed the easiest part of its housing boom.
We would still describe home prices in Tokyo as rising when comparing today with a year ago. From here, however, the market should be much more uneven. Premium new projects and scarce land can keep getting more expensive, while aggressively priced resale condos face tougher negotiations and more price cuts.
So the cleanest answer is: Tokyo home prices are still higher, but buyers can no longer assume that every extra month of waiting will make the same property more expensive.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis asks whether Tokyo home prices are going up or down by separating the market into the indicators that can move independently: completed resale transactions, standardized resale prices, new-build pricing and supply, transaction volumes, listings and inventory, residential land values, rents, financing conditions, construction costs and demographic demand.
We give annual changes more weight when judging the broader direction of prices, while shorter-term monthly changes are used to identify turning points. Completed transactions show what buyers are actually paying; listings, inventory and price revisions show how much pressure is building before those changes appear in headline sale prices.
Tokyo’s 23 wards are kept separate from Greater Tokyo where combining them would hide materially different behaviour. We also treat new-condo averages cautiously because a small number of expensive project launches can move the average sharply without implying the same appreciation for ordinary resale homes.
The main resale-market evidence comes from REINS Market Watch data and the REINS statistical data library. Standardized 70 m² resale pricing, central-Tokyo price revisions, rents and detached-house trends come from Tokyo Kantei’s 70 m² resale-condo series, its June 2026 resale report, its July 2026 condominium-rent report and its detached-house market series.
New-condominium pricing and supply are taken from the Real Estate Economic Institute’s H1 2026 Greater Tokyo report and its condominium market database. Residential land values come from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s 2026 official land-price assessment.
Financing conditions are checked against MUFG housing-loan rates, Flat 35 long-term fixed mortgage rates and Bank of Japan monetary-policy decisions. Construction costs are supported by the MLIT construction-cost deflator, while population and migration context come from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s latest population estimate and the Statistics Bureau of Japan’s internal-migration data.
The final conclusion comes from the weight of those indicators together rather than from any single headline figure. That is how we distinguish between Tokyo homes still being more expensive than a year ago and Tokyo home prices still accelerating. The evidence supports the first much more clearly than the second.
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