Opulent Enclave in Japan
Even given the high price of property in Tokyo, Japan, the price of one unit has attracted special regard for being the highest price ever quoted for a one bedroom condo. The list price is $21.8 million. The broker handling the sale is Japan’s Sotheby International Realty.
At 4,434 square feet, the unit is far larger than most Japanese detached home. Housing tends to be compact at all levels in Japan where level land is hard to be found putting a premium on all sorts of property. Apartments and condos tend to be quite small so this particular unit is the size of half a dozen or more times normal sized places.
Driving up the price is the custom made furniture that comes with a sale. Walls are imported fromItalyalong with the floors and the doors. There is a garden courtyard which is fully enclosed, and the amount of closet space alone exceeds the size of the average Japanese living space.
The dining room is set up in the Ryotei style. This configuration may be familiar to many who patronize Japanese restaurants. In it, patrons sit around a table and watch a chef prepare their meal in front of them. No cook or any other personnel come with the sale price however.
The home is sited in the Minami Azuba district which is known to have the highest prices in the city of Tokyo. Still, at $4,921 per square foot, this condo is one for the record books.
More Rooms than Average
While the unit only has one bedroom, this condo contains several other rooms. Each of these rooms is considerably larger than anyone would consider as normal. This along with the high end craftsmanship of construction adds a lot to the price.
The original artwork adorning the walls was created on site by leading Japanese artists. There is further ornamentation that graces the courtyard and terraces that border the unit. One of the closets is set up to hold two hundred pairs of shoes.
Although this is a one bedroom condo, it has earned the nickname of “The House.” Japanese tend to shy away from showy displays of wealth so the unit may be more aimed at the foreign market. There was a large scale exodus of European and American executives and investors in the wake of the 2008 global financial crises. They have yet to begin flocking back in significant numbers, but there are growing numbers of newly rich Chinese who are buying into the Japanese market.
The average price for a condo of this size in this neighborhood would normally be slightly less than $2 million. The extra cost is largely attributed to the high priced extras such as the artwork and the custom design. Japanexperienced a tremendous run up in real estate prices in the 80’s. The housing bubble that took place at that time far exceeded the price rises experienced in the more recent housing bubble in the United States. The subsequent bursting of the bubble left the Japanese economy in shambles.
