I agree with Mandylion's take on this. It is absolutely criminal the way the Japanese homebuyer is effectively held hostage by the cabal of contractors who dominate Japan's homebuilding industry. 99% of the new houses going up today are completely worthless and will have to be knocked down in 20 years because they are so shoddily built that the walls will simply have rotted away in that time. Yet this doesn't stop these companies from charging more than twice the amount their American and European counterparts charge to build these ****-boxes. It really is a crime too, because Japan's traditional architecture is so beatiful, yet it has been almost completely replaced by sterile plastic crap,.

One encouraging trend I've read about though is the increased popularity of buying existing traditional style homes and renovating them to give them all the comforts of a modern home. In most cases this can be done for the same price or significantly less than the cost of building a new home from scratch. And the benefits are significant. The older houses are much more durable than the new ones and can thus be viewed as a long term investment. Plus they are MUCH more attractive, so people can actually enjoy living in them as opposed to simply tolerating living in them.