Abstract
This paper explores the stratification of multiple-property ownership within the context of Japan's post-growth society. In many mature home-ownership economies, increasing numbers of homeowners have invested in acquiring additional properties with expectations of accumulating real estate assets and obtaining rent incomes. This has been analyzed in relation to the concept of housing asset-based welfare. In post-growth Japan that is characterized by demographic and economic stagnation, however, high-income households often possess additional properties that produce rent incomes, whereas low-income households tend to suffer from burdens imposed by obligations to manage vacant properties that cannot be sold or rented out due largely to unfavorable location and dilapidation.
The paper draws on a questionnaire survey on owners of multiple-properties who live in big cities, in terms of investigating and highlighting divisions between those who own additional properties as ‘wealth’ and those who own vacant properties as ‘waste’. Rich households have tended to purchase multi-family housing properties in urban areas, augmenting assets and earning rent incomes. Lower-income households, who are often aged, have in many cases inherited single-family housing located in provincial regions where they were born and brought up and have faced difficulties in disposing of such properties due to demographic and economic decline in the region. In the field of housing studies, many researchers have considered multiple-property ownership to be the store of wealth. Therefore, Japan provides an important case study with regards to the division of housing properties into ‘wealth’ and ‘waste’, in light of developing debates on residential-property-based welfare.
