On March 1st, Nomura Real Estate Solutions announced the results of its 22nd "Home Buying Awareness Survey". 

Nomura Real Estate Solutions conducts a biannual online survey of registered members of its real estate information website, Nomcom. 

This latest survey was conducted between January 24th and February 6th, with 2,460 respondents.

As for the future of real estate prices, 31.4% (up 10.0 points from the previous survey) predicted that prices will “rise", up 10% from the previous survey and a significant increase. 

The percentage of respondents who expect real estate prices to decline decreased slightly to 24.1% (down 0.4 points from the previous survey), and the percentage of respondents who "had no opinion" decreased significantly to 12.9% (down 9.8% from the previous survey). 

The most common reasons for expecting prices to rise further were "rising material and labor costs" and "monetary easing”. 

Reasons for expecting prices to decrease included "Japan’s decreasing population" and "Prices are too high to buy" being the most common responses.

On the topic of whether it is time to sell real estate, 78.6% of respondents answered that they "think it is time to sell" or "somewhat think it is time to sell", an increase of 8.0% from the previous survey. 

This answer was followed by 52.7% of respondents who said they expected to be able to sell their property on good terms now, up 2.4% from the previous survey.

32.4% of respondents answered that “it is a good time to buy" or "I somewhat think it is a good time to buy”, marking an increase of 8.2% from the previous survey. 

The top reasons for thinking that now is a good time to buy were "Interest rates on mortgages are low" at 68.3% of respondents (down 3.7% from the previous survey) and "Real estate prices are expected to continue to rise" at 38.0% (up 5.7%). 

Further Reading

Nomura Solutions Home Buying Awareness Survey (Japanese only; March, 2022)