Nando Times

Land prices continue to fall in Japan

The Associated Press

TOKYO (March 22, 2001 8:37 a.m. EST) - The Japanese government said Thursday that land prices fell 4.9 percent in 2000, the 10th straight year of declines.

Residential land prices fell by 4.2 percent, faster than the 4.1 percent drop in 1999, the Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Ministry said.

Commercial property values tumbled 7.5 percent, compared with an 8 percent fall in the previous year.

In the Tokyo area, land prices dropped 6.4 percent, a slight improvement over last year's 7.4 percent decline.

Growing demand for office space in Tokyo's main downtown districts helped slow the pace of declines, the ministry said.

Land prices have been falling since the late 1980s. Banks are still weighed down by bad loans because of the falling value of real estate collateral.

Osaka and Nagoya, two major commercial hubs in western Japan, continued to see big declines, and many retailers went bankrupt or pulled out of city centers, the ministry said.

The report was based on data from 31,000 land transactions nationwide.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), March 22, 2001