Mari Ishiyama, a 38-year-old secretary at a foreign bank, had been looking for an apartment for several years, but always struck out when it came to the final lottery (a standard real-estate practice to decide who can purchase a unit in a building when there are too many prospective buyers). "My friends told me I was probably not destined to own a condo, and I almost gave up," she says.
This year, however, her dream came true. She found just the place she'd been looking for, a newly built high-quality condominium with a patio in Yoga, Tokyo, and recently moved in.
Her 60-something-sq.-meter condominium was originally priced at 65 million yen, much too expensive for a single working woman, but she eventually decided to buy it when the real-estate company offered her a "big discount."