Young Japanese people are looking to buy their own homes amid skyrocketing real estate prices and rising interest rates

(Tokyo = Yonhap News) Correspondent Cho Seong-mi = It has been found that young Japanese people, who tend to avoid the risks of purchasing a home even if they can afford the high monthly rent, are trying to buy their own home due to the recent surge in real estate prices and rising interest rates.

According to the results of a household survey by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on the 6th, the homeownership rate for households with two or more people in their 20s or younger was 40.7% last year, the highest since 2000 when related statistics began to be compiled.

This ratio stayed in the low 20% range in the early and mid 2000s and then fluctuated, remaining in the low 30% range from 2015 to 2023, and rapidly rising in 2024 and 2025, reaching the 40% level last year.

Previously, in Japan, after the bubble economy burst in the early 1990s and the 'myth of real estate invincibility' that real estate prices would continue to rise was broken, the tendency to choose monthly rental housing rather than buying a house was especially strong among young people.

However, the Sankei Shimbun explained that the number of young generation households in a hurry to purchase a home has recently been increasing against the backdrop of rapidly rising real estate prices and rising interest rates in Japan, which were once at zero interest rates.

It was analyzed that this trend is accelerating as awareness spreads that the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to buy a house, and as the financial sector offers ultra-long-term loans of up to 50 years.

According to a Recruit survey, the proportion of people purchasing new apartments in the Japanese metropolitan area for an amount exceeding eight times the annual household income, regardless of age, jumped from 7.1% in 2009 to 20.4% in 2024.