Taiwanese showed a growing interest in Japan’s housing market after Tokyo last week won the bid to host 2020 Olympic Games, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said yesterday.
The nation’s only listed broker processed 200 inquiries a day on property purchases in Tokyo for the past week, three or four times more than before the Japanese capital won the bid on Sept. 8, Sinyi Tokyo managing director Kenny Ho (何偉宏) told a media briefing in Taipei. Ho attributed the rising interest to expectations of property price hikes in the run-up to the 2020 Olympics.
Turnover at Sinyi Tokyo totaled ￥16.8 billion (US$168 million) between January and this month, rising 98 percent from the same period last year, Ho said, predicting the figure would approach ￥33 billion by the end of the year.
Housing prices increased by between 10 percent and 20 percent in districts near the Olympic Villages in London, the host city of last year’s Olympics, Sinyi said, adding that Japanese brokers reported 40 deals over the weekend alone in locations near the future Olympic Village in Tokyo.
Coupled with its improving economy, Japan’s weakening currency makes real-estate investments attractive, Sinyi project manager Lee Chien-yi (李芊億) said.
Prospective Taiwanese buyers are mostly in the non-technology sectors, Lee said, adding that rental yields in Tokyo are likely to drop as property prices rise.
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