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Tokyo’s Construction and Development is Back to Pre-pandemic Levels

Tokyo’s Construction and Development is Back to Pre-pandemic Levels

March 15, 2021 – Development plans for Tokyo’s property sector are now back to pre-pandemic levels, a recent Nikkei Real Estate Market Report survey showed. 

The Nikkei Real Estate Market Report reported that development construction applications for the city hit 133 in the period from October to December last year. The aggregate gross floor area of the 133 projects is approximately 1.76 million square metres.

Nikkei said both the number of applications and aggregate gross floor area are at their highest since the June 2019 survey.

These development applications, which include plans for buildings of all uses, such as offices, residential and retail, were filed to the governmental offices in the five central wards of Tokyo as well as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Yokohama City.

A breakdown of the numbers showed that 65 out of the 133 projects were residential, 32 were offices, eight were retail, one was a hotel and 27 were classified as others.

While residential is strong, accounting for over half of the applications, the plans for hotels “remain at a low level,” Nikkei said in its report. 

In terms of size, 32 projects or about a fourth of the total number of development plans were large-scale projects, meaning they had a gross floor area of over 10,000 square meters. 

By intended use, residential had the highest number with 14 projects, followed by office with six projects, and retail with one. The rest of the 11 projects had been classified as others, which will include mixed-use developments. Three of these projects were exceptionally large, exceeding a gross floor area of 100,000 square metres. 

Among the most notable development projects in the pipeline are the Oimachi Station Area Hiromachi District Development and the Tokyo Rail Gate East Development Project. 

Oimachi Station Area Hiromachi District Development is a mixed-use facility with a gross floor of 259,000 square metres by East Japan Railway Company. The plan is to construct a residential and hotel building with 26 floors above ground and two below, an office building with 23 floors above ground and four below and a retail building with three floors above ground and one below.

Tokyo Rail Gate East Development Project, meanwhile, is a multi-tenant logistics facility under Japan Freight Railway’s Rail Gate brand. The plan is to construct a facility with a gross floor area of about 174,000 square metres, which can accommodate up to 34 tenants. 

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