Average commercial land prices in Japan were almost flat in July, an improvement from eight straight years of decline, thanks partly to robust demand for city hotel and shop construction to meet foreign tourist demand, the government said Tuesday.
Prices across the country were up 0.005 percent on July 1 compared with the same day a year earlier, while strong demand for offices boosted the prices in the nation's three largest metropolitan regions to a rise of 2.9 percent, data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism showed.
But the margin of increase in the Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka metropolitan regions was smaller than that in Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima and Fukuoka, where average commercial land prices rose by a sharp 6.7 percent.