PriceCheckTokyo

Housing Costs in Tokyo

People often ask us "What is the average rental cost for an apartment in Tokyo?" or "What much does it cost to buy a house in Tokyo?".

These are difficult questions because "average" can be subjective. Nonetheless, by popular demand, we'll try to give you a rough idea.

Low end of the rental market
For ¥35,000 a month, one can rent a 12 square-meters room. Such a room would have a sink inside and perhaps a stove for cooking. It would not have a toilet nor a bathroom. The community Japanese-style toilet (often being referred to as a "hole in the ground") is shared among six or seven people. To take a bath, one must visit the local public bath, at a cost of about ¥700 per use. We can't tell you exactly how many Tokyo residents live in places like these but there are a lot.

Top end of the rental market
These are properties geared towards the western expatriate executives. These houses would have American-sized electrical appliances which are too big to fit in most Tokyo apartments. Places like these would be 150 to 300 square-meters in size and the rent would range from ¥1,000,000 to ¥2,500,000 a month.

Owning a place
The average-of-the-average Tokyo married-couple may be looking to buy a brand-new 70 square-meters apartment at a cost of ¥45,000,000 and above.

Notes
Building standards and architectural designs here is quite different. For example, even for apartments with a floor space of about 100 square-meters, it is rare to find ones with two bathrooms and/or two toilets. That may seem strange to foreigners but the fact that Japanese families tend to share the same tub of water for bathing every night, it is merely practical to have only one bathroom in the house. Moreover, a 70 square-meter apartment would be marketed as a 3-bedroom apartment, i.e. rooms are small.