According to a March 21 report by the land, infrastructure and tourism ministry, as of Jan. 1 land prices are showing signs of stabilizing. If the government adopts the right policies, the speed at which land prices recover may accelerate. But this will not happen if people feel that the real economy is not improving.
Average land prices across the country fell 1.6 percent in residential areas and 2.1 percent in commercial areas in the 12 months to Jan. 1. But the range of drop was 0.7 percentage point and 1.0 percentage point smaller, respectively, than the corresponding land price drops a year before. Of the 26,000 sites covered by the survey, land prices rose in about 2,000 places, compared with some 550 places as of Jan. 1, 2012.
In the three megalopolis regions of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, land prices declined less than 1 percent on average — 0.6 percent for residential areas and 0.5 percent for commercial areas. In Nagoya, residential area land prices leveled off. Elsewhere, residential areas saw a 2.5 percent fall in land prices and commercial areas a 3.3 percent fall.