Residential environment for condominium buyers: Changing preferences in Tokyo’s suburbs

Abstract

Condominiums have been a major tenure status in metropolises, while recent population shrinkage sheds lights on its sustainability—whether they continue to attract new residents. Exploiting a detailed questionnaire survey for buyers of newly-built condominiums, we investigate the long-run trends of the preferred residential environment across the Tokyo metropolitan area. We find that new residents from outside of the city tend to put an emphasis on the living environment of the neighborhood etc., and that the trend is recently becoming more prominent in the suburbs. We also find that the criterion serves as a critical determinant to finally choose the specific property/location, among the factors initially taken into consideration. The spatial distribution of the subjective residential environment shows that not all the suburban areas have advantages on the desired criteria while the relative strength of the neighborhood remains stable over time. The results imply that the existing suburban condominiums may need some adjustment to gain future inflows.