Despite recent signs of recovery, the housing slump caused by stricter regulations for obtaining building permits will continue to hurt the economy for some time to come, analysts say.
Housing starts dropped 35 percent in October from a year earlier for the fourth straight month of decline after plummeting 44 percent in September, the government said last week.
The slump began in July following a revision of the Building Standards Law in June in response to revelations in 2005 that architect Hidetsugu Aneha had been fabricating quake resistance data. Some of the buildings he designed had only a quarter of the structural reinforcement required by law. The scandal revealed that the system for checking and confirming the structural integrity of buildings had been lacking.