China bargain-hunters snap up Japan homes

Tokyo

THE trend has already hit Sydney, Vancouver and the US. Now it's happening in Japan: Busloads of real estate buyers from China are coming in, buying up homes and pushing prices higher.

Realty agencies in Beijing are organising twice-monthly tours to Tokyo and Osaka, where 40 Chinese at a time come for three-day property-shopping trips, seeking safe places to invest their cash abroad. They're being prompted by the yen's decline to 22-year lows and excitement over the 2020 Tokyo Olympics driving up prices, as they did in Beijing in 2008. Property tours will soon start from Shanghai too.

Partly as a result of nascent Chinese buying, Tokyo apartment prices have reached the highest levels …