The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically the tax system for residential housing in Japan. First, the method of analysis was to divide Japanese workers' households by yearly income quintile groups and to estimate the marginal effective tax rate of owner-occupied housing from 1976 to 1995, and to make quantitatively clear the effect of three kinds of tax reduction. Second, the tax parameter of tax allowance implemented in 1999 was inserted in margin.al effective tax rate from 1976 to 1995 and the effect of tax allowance reform in 1999 quantitatively clarified.
As a result of this analysis, the following two points are made clear. First, there are three kinds of tax reduction for owneroccupied housing in Japan.“Tax allowance” has the biggest effect of tax reduction. The effect of tax allowance was progressively stronger from 1976 to 1995 and the effect of tax allowance in 1995 is about three times greater than the effect in 1976. Second, the tax reduction effect of tax allowance implemented in 1999 was almost as large as in 1995. The effect in lower yearly income groups in 1999 was a little smaller than in 1995.

View full abstract

This paper intends to examine mainly how planning and housing management policies affect the community formation in a recently built large-scale public housing estate, using the data from 30 individual interviews conducted in 1999. The main findings are as follows: 1) The massive concentration of the people having specific needs and a building form such as a high-rise flat containing more than hundred units are the negative factors for community formation. 2) The estate where participation of inhabitants in the management activities is institutionally requested tends to develop a sense of community especially, among participants of management activities. 3) The direct support for organization building is likely more effective than the promotion of a social gathering at the early stage of community building.

View full abstract

The quality of rental housing depends on not only landlord maintenance but also tenant maintenance. In the presence of the Japanese Tenant Protection Law (JTPL), courts may pass the judgment that gives the tenant a right to use housing unit, although it is more efficient to give it to the landlord. If this situation is anticipated, landlord investment for maintenance will decrease, while that of the tenant will increase in the tenancy period. We show that if landlord maintenance and tenant maintenance are perfect substitutes, and the maintenance cost function of tenants is the same as that of landlords, then the JTPL leads to less maintenance. Consequently, the JTPL lowers the quality of rental housing. Otherwise, it is indeterminate whether the JTPL leads to less maintenance.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss one rule of dividing financial costs of constructions of attached public facilities together with development by the evaluation of environment. In this paper , the way of the evaluation is to estimate of externalities of development and surrounding environmental improvements in residential area by real estate appraisal. It is found that the externalities of attached public facilities cannot compensate for disexternalities of developments, but by addition of environmental improvement the total externalities can more than compensate for the disexternalities in this research area. We can judge the cost share of the construction and necessity of public facilities and environmental improvements by the way of the estimation of externalities.

View full abstract

A logistic regression model is devised to analyze how land prices and neighborhood circumstances influence on the land-use transition. To do so, we found on the thresholds of land price gap and land-use proportion, which divides the tendency of transition.
The results show that (1) when the land price gap exceeds, a mount of land-use transition becomes small; and that (2) the estimated threshold value of housing proportion is about 31% in the CBD of Tokyo.

View full abstract