Publications

- November 1, 2011: Vol. 3, Number 10

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Shaken, Not Stirred: The Japanese Property Market Holds Promise for the Discerning Investor

by Alex Frew McMillan

After the earthquake-induced triple crisis of this past March, Japan saw property transactions plunge. Is it time to dip back into the world’s second-largest property pool?

Japan boosters have pledged that the country is about to turn a corner economically numerous times. But they’ve been disappointed on just as many occasions.

The earthquake and tsunami in March, and subsequent nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, rocked Japan’s economy yet again. The crisis came just as Japan was emerging from a savage recession following the global financial crisis, which saw the economy decline 6.9 percent in 2009.

The earthquake shook the property industry, with the volume of transactions in institutional-grade real estate plunging an eye-popping 42 percent in the second quarter compared with the same period the previous year, according to Real Capital Analytics (RCA), to just US$3.6 billion. It was down even more dramatically from the US$11

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