New house for old

Back on the 25th October I wrote about the demolition of a house at the end of the lane, bemoaning the sheer waste of building materials and effort that is so characteristic of the Japanese housing market. Here detached houses are sometimes demolished within 20 years of building and few survive beyond 40 years. Obsolescence is literally 'built in' through the use of cheap materials. Although substantial older family houses sometimes survive from the nineteenth century in the country, in cities you will have to search to find dwellings much older than 1970.

The house at the end of the lane was demolished by its owners and the site redeveloped. Although the floor area of the property was increased from about 70 to 100 square metres, depressingly they made no effort to enlarge their site and include a little garden although the plots on all sides were vacant and could be bought for a few thousand. They simply built a bigger property on the same area, which must now including their parking bay cover 90% of their plot.

So in two months a new house is built. In normally takes a couple of weeks to cast the new foundations and let them harden, and then the main frame of the house is up in a couple of days with the help of about half a dozen workers. After that, apart from subcontracting the roof, plumbing and wiring the interior fitting and external finishing is completed in about six weeks by two carpenters. It is all that fast.

This aspect of the perceived value of 'newness' related to residential property is something I just don't understand. People here value it in exactly the same way as they would with new cars - shiny and scratch free and everything 'works'. Actually our old Nissan 'Skyline' which is 21 years old must already have outlived many of the houses built back in 1990! And just like cars once you have lived in it then your house is 'second hand' ('middle aged' is the Japanese term) - used goods and so the capital you have put into the place is already diminished, you can never recover what you spent.

This is all so strange compared with Britain, where old houses are usually worth more, that it is hard for me to take in sometimes.


(pictures - top the new property this morning - above - the old property on 25 October)