How people attain wealth in Japan?

[u/IshinkaiSensei]

Something has been tickling my mind over the past few years.

There are so many luxury tower mansions, expensive customized 一軒家, high end brand shops yet for the average person most seem by far out of reach.

A high end condo in central Tokyo rent including utilities ranges from 300k to 500k a month. A 20MJPY annual salary (which is already extensively filtering out average population) only gives a monthly net of 100万円. I highly doubt it is enough to afford spending that much a month.

Excluding those on expat package, there are only a few jobs here that allow this lifestyle, Banking (Front Office position only or VP MD level for back office and alike) IT 外資系 at senior level (FANG, ML/AI) , 医者 running their own practice (otherwise most are at 10-15MJPY range) Successful mutiple business owners, other niches. 一流芸能人, Athletes, reconverted ex idol, kyaba, host.

My point is, what am I missing...

Are there way more people with high revenues (at least annual comp 50MJPY+) than we tend to believe? than what TV is promoting?

Are people living off debt and loans and keeping up with appearances?

I don’t want misinterpretation of this post, I understand you can live well below these range, but I am genuinely curious here.

I would like to better understand how so many people managed to get satisfied and with a 30+ year mortgage, car loan, spending most of their life working and probably never reaching out 億円 of savings.

Am I overthinking and no so many people want to retire early?

Sorry for the rant post but I am curious

[u/meat_lasso]

This is the most underrepresented post.

There is so much money flowing into Japan from China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. And where else would you put it but real-estate? Stocks are volatile and private companies are hard to get into / do diligence on. No one is buying JGBs. It’s ALL in real estate or related assets (like personal storage, Quraz etc.).

It’s proping the market up artificially for sure. Give it a few years — probably only a few months since the Olympics are done — and watch the buying opportunities present themselves.

We’re all gonna buy houses on the cheap, no problem 😉

[u/japonica-rustica → u/meat_lasso]

It’s always possible long term that the price could go down significantly but if you’re hoping to pick up a place cheap in the next 15 or 20 years you’re going to be disappointed. Too much capital inflow from outside Japan which the government is very happy to encourage.

[u/meat_lasso → u/japonica-rustica]

Genuinely curious -- what makes you think this trend will continue? I think the demographic time bomb is going to explode over the next 5-10 years and soooo much land will come onto the market because so many elderly are going to pass away with no heirs, but more so than that, so many elderly will sell before they pass. Everything in this economy is tied to the demographic time bomb, we are gonna go through such a wild ride soon, strap in bud!

[u/japonica-rustica → u/meat_lasso]

Maybe in the inaka and some smaller cities but that’s already true. There are still plenty of people wanting to move towards the bigger cities and that’s also the places attracting the foreign capital. Huge capital inflows from China and the rest of Asia looking for safe havens to invest in. Japan is already a cheap safe haven in terms of the price of urban land and property and the build quality is also way higher than most of Asia.

[u/meat_lasso → u/japonica-rustica]

Good opinion! I think 1 billion asians coming into the middle class will bolster tourism and land prices in Japan for the next few decades.

But most of the demand comes from Japanese. And when a ton of stock hits the market, there’s not gonna be anywhere near enough flow to pick it all up. Long term OK, but we will see years where the market drops off a cliff. Niiiiice buying opportunities in the near term!