Having lived in Japan for a few years I don't think their typical housing construction is a good model to follow for other countries. To begin with houses in Japan are usually not built to last because typhoons, earthquakes, fires and mud slides have historically destroyed them in the course of a few decades.
Japanese homes have very few windows and those they have are for light rather than looking out. Japanese are very conscious of their privacy and are not comfortable with windows that others can see into their homes. Waterfront property with windows is not in demand at all.
My experience of new housing is was that it uses primarily whole wood that is visible in the finished structure rather than engineered wood or framing that would be covered with plaster or gyp rock and paint in the finished home.
Japanese homes are often drafty which is ok because they are not heated through out but usually have a kotatsu to heat the occupants locally. This works well enough for heat in winter but not as well with air conditioning in summer which are a killer in most cities.
Most houses have dark gray or dark brown exteriors but one in a thousand will be bright yellow. What's with that?
> To begin with houses in Japan are usually not built to last because typhoons, earthquakes, fires and mud slides have historically destroyed them in the course of a few decades.
other reasons that resale homes are not very good business in Japan:
- Japanese believe it's not clean to buy a home others lived in before, they obsess over ultra-modern brand-new places the same way Apple fans like their newest gadget.
- houses fully depreciate in 2-3 decades
- ghosts (this is not a joke. it includes the believe that the house isn't just an object but has a "soul" (this believe extends to cars and other inanimate objects))
I'm currently living in Aomori prefecture, and I agree with you, Japanese housing is horrible.
> Most houses have dark gray or dark brown exteriors but one in a thousand will be bright yellow. What's with that?
This is so really depressing. Here in the north most days are cloudy, even in summer, so in addition to the lack of light and the sky being gray, the land is also gray. I have even seen black houses, what's wrong with them.
We have recently finished planning a prefab home in Germany and hopefully soon the actual building process will start. Just a couple of insights:
* roughly a third of private homes are build like this
* prices are a little lower than custom build (although not as much as when you start the planning)
* very extensive customization is possible
* walls are high tech versions of a century old building technique (wooden frame with heat preserving insulation)
* energy efficiency (walls, heating system, solar) is brought to an extreme
* due to regulations and and extensive planning (Germany, right?) it takes 9-15 months
* The building itself only takes a couple of days
* Building brick by brick wasn't an option to us due to a current lack of qualified crafts men and women (you end up with 90%, waiting months for the rest to be finished)
My thoughts looking at the Japanese ones: Nice minimalistic architecture but some (already mentioned) things seem unhandy. Also doubt that they are as energy efficient as their german counterparts ;)
The Japanese buildings are absolutely not energy efficient. They are horrible in terms of energy efficiency and durability.
Not to mention, the homes in this article represent something like 0.01% or less of actual Japanese prefab homes. Most have very few windows, which are very small. The interior spaces tend to be fairly small as well. Not these open styles.
This is all due to earthquake planning. Studies have consistently found lightweight exterior walls with lots of interior support are most likely to remain standing in a severe earthquake. The small windows reduce weight and are also more efficient since the sun in Japan will roast your house in the summer if you have big windows.
I’ve been hearing for decades about how great and cheap prefab homes are, so when I recently started looking I to adding a second home on my lot (~800sq ft or so), I looked into it.
What I found was very disappointing - costs were the same or higher when compared to a custom unit built in-place, and the options for style, layout, and size were much less.
There is some advantage in speed, but at this size it’s a matter of a few months difference- not enough for the trade offs.
I have been to Omaha for a few shareholders' meetings, and I've toured a Clayton prefab home erected in the convention center.
I do like the aesthetics of the Japanese prefab home that is in the article, but I cannot imagine anyone using the glass shower or tub that open to the entire neighborhood in this picture (to say nothing of having it behind my desk):
> I do like the aesthetics of the Japanese prefab home that is in the article, but I cannot imagine anyone using the glass shower or tub that open to the entire neighborhood in this picture (to say nothing of having it behind my desk):
Some apartment buildings in China have bathrooms on balconies. Try taking shower in -5C°
They are common in the US, but they are contained in a bathroom that has solid walls. I can't think of any culture where people would be comfortable with a bathroom layout that allows anyone to just look in. That limits this bathroom to small apartments for singles (or couples with no kids) who don't entertain, and from what I know of Japanese culture I'm not sure it would catch on there.
As a marketing effort though it makes sense. You can show the whole thing off at a show to someone walking by and anyone who is interested can imagine how it would look with solid walls.
My most recent home here in Seattle was built with glass showers. The house was a three-story townhome, with the master shower up top, "overlooking" the stairwell.
The second floor bathroom is split into two - a toilet on one end of the hallway, a glass shower on the other end made by boxing off the end of the hallway with a sliding-glass door and large windows. Both sets of glass are frosted.
It's clear that the architect used the showers to help with lighting - the side of the building with the showers has the best exposure, and by keeping them translucent all the way into the living space, the hallways, stairs, and master bedroom are bathed in natural light.
Despite the frosted glass, the showers do have a slight exhibitionist feel at first. The second floor shower has a roll-down blind on the outside, primarily for guests.
The third floor shower has partial window treatments, which provides enough privacy given the layout of the neighborhood.
We thought it might be a bit uncomfortable; however, it works out well, and almost all guests have declined to use the blinds. I was surprised too.
What we haven't solved in the value creation equation is the people factor, whether in software, construction or medicine.
It does get easier to address at scale. When applied to construction, the at-scale approach used to increase predictability is primarily available through a) pre-fab construction under conditions approaching control b) repeat buildings, the classic cookie-cutter houses. There's a reason why they're popular with developers.
A custom house will take longer and cost more than the estimate, on average. There is research on this in both small-scale and large-scale construction.
As a personal anecdote, I & partner built our own permanent dwelling (check my posts). It went over time and over budget, and even then, we had to compromise on features.
Don't forget that central heating /AC and "proper" insulation are not a standard feature in Japanese construction. Neither are cellars nor sound-proofing. Their plumbing is rarely winterized, and they often have the classic approach of kitchen on one side of wall, bathroom on the other. That's one bathroom, and a much simpler plumbing setup than multi-units popular in Europe or the US. These are just some factors in a long list that significantly simplify projects in Japan and make pre-fab a strong contender.
The Japanese consumer expects less and pays the same if not more.
Owner of a customized pre-fab (!?) home here in the Kanto (Tokyo) area.
Homes in Hokkaido area, where it gets quite cold in winter, have good insulation. If one is building a custom house in Japan from construction company that does pre-fab, ask to see the catalog for houses in Hokkaido. It will have features such as double paned windows and venting systems with heat exchangers. I'm the only one in the neighborhood with the heat exchanger setup.
Regarding central air versus having a compressor for each room. My previous house in the same area had central air and in hindsight, it wasn't an economical choice. It made all the rooms drafty and we were constantly fighting with low humidity. The current house has it's own compressor for each room and along with the ventilation provided by the heat exchanger, just running two units downstairs is enough for the whole house.
Have you looked into price comparisons for homes in Japan vs Europe or the US? Something off-the-napkin such as "an average salary person would need 30 years to pay off an average unit" or the like?
One thing that turned me off property in Germany was the amount of regulation and inspections involved, which can also be a problem in US areas with aggressive localities bent on generating revenue from homeowners. This, in my estimates, increased prices and made home ownership less attractive (for me).
In my pedestrian look-up of prices for homes in Japan, when accounting for salaries, they were comparable in salary-life-years spent, or higher, to US or Europe. What is your experience?
I used to live in the southern California area in the United States. I made a bit better then you average salaryman. Home prices varied wildly but I was able to get a 30 year loan for a new construction house. I did benefit from for low interest rate and liberal lending practices.
In Japan, I make nearly double what an average salaryman. This made getting a 35 year mortgage possible. I spend about 30% of my income on the home, its taxes, and upkeep. The current house is customized to higher spec then what is typically offered.
Like many places, prices vary quite a bit. This home was purchased during the "before" times and my commute into central Tokyo was between 90 to 120 minutes, by train or bicycle. Land prices is a quarter of what it is close to the center, about half compared to places within an hours commute time. For location reference, my station is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruhino_Station
The building itself is relatively cheap for the quality. I was able to spec it out before it was constructed. Most pre-built houses do skimp on insulation, ventilation systems, and typically have primitive co-generation power.
The curious thing about Japan is that buildings depreciate to zero in 30 years time. Land prices are stagnant or loses value the further out from major metropolitan areas. I had to get a realtor estimate on the house, and in the four years since the house was constructed, I would only be able to sell for about 80% of what I purchased it for.
> Homes in Hokkaido area, where it gets quite cold in winter, have good insulation.
Define "good insulation". I live in Aomori prefecture and most houses here have terrible insulation, and when I visited Hokkaido it didn't look much better. There is a reason why home centers sell lots of different materials to insulate the house yourself, because the construction itself is awful.
I think it depends if the house was pre-built or meant for rentals. I had the unfortunate experience of buying a used pre-built house in the Tokyo area and it was terrible. Every room vented directly outside, windows were single pane with bare framing, and it felt like it had only token insulation. Same with rental apartments, with the only benefit being small places.
The builders I've worked with; Tokyu Homes and Seksui House build all over Japan and have a catalog of options catered for each region. ie: Kanto (Tokyo area), Tohoku (Aomori), Hokkaido, etc. The contents of the catalog are surprisingly different. For example, triple pane glass and heat exchangers for ventilation is not shown in Kanto catalog.
My ex-partner was an architect and I have a strong interest in things mechanical. Along with experience of having multiple homes built for us and with a western attitude, we were able get a livable house that's fairly efficient (for a Western lifestyle).
> Don't forget that central heating /AC and "proper" insulation are not a standard feature in Japanese construction.
A recent Reddit thread of non-Japanese immigrants (I won't link it in case it brings blow back for them) had this (insulation specifically but heating more generally) as the top complaint about living in Japan.
Traditionally wood was used for window frames but it couldn't provide enough amount for building after WW2.. Aluminum is better than wood for durability and air sealing but stupid for insulation. Now all major window frame manufacturer is aluminum industry so that's why transition to resin window frames is hard..
The Japanese have a culture of tearing down and rebuilding houses after a few decades. So a prefab building makes perfect sense. There is no reason to build a prefab with aircon and insulation. Here in South Africa, most middle class houses don't have either, despite being "fairly" rich (we have massive inequality so middle class and up are at the level of Canadians, while the majority of lower class income are at the level of the DRC).
Not sure where you're looking but modulars are definitely cheaper in the Western US. Many off the freeway modular dealers can get you a three bed for under 200k. They are not attractive though. Clayton, Champion, Commodore , etc fall into this category.
If you step up to a higher end manufacturer you end up paying about the price of a site built but with much nicer finishes than the comparable site built. Method, Ideabox, Timberland, etc fall into this category.
Custom homes use a lot of standardized parts. A 2x4 is the same in Width and Depth in all the US. One of the most common lengths to buy them in is 92 5/8 - which is the perfect size when you have a 2x4 on the bottom of a wall and 2 on the top for the standard sized wall boards to fit, thus saving a lot of labor cutting each board to length. If you want a taller wall, you can also buy 104 5/8s lengths, and there is wallboard that is a bit wider so it fits exactly. If you want a wall height other than those two you will pay extra because there is a lot more labor.
Most custom houses should be looked at as custom kits. The standard gives a lot of room for the types of customization people actually want to do, while not a lot of room for the types people do anyway. Round towers look nice, but in practice they waste a lot of space compared to rectangular because nothing fits either inside or outside. (Castles went to round towers when cannons got strong enough to to knock down flat walls, for a while round was enough better in defense as to be worth the downsides)
Yeah, I've really never been impressed with the quality of any prfab house I've toured. Especially looking at any built at least 20 years ago, they just seem so cheap compared to all the comps, and ironically never seemed much less expensive.
I don't understand the obsession with prefab homes. Constructing homes is a well-understood, mostly solved problem. The cost of housing is not high because homes are difficult or expensive to build, it's because the land underneath the house in desirable areas is expensive, and various regulations make it difficult to build high density housing. No amount of streamlining the construction process is going to change that.
We're just going now through the process of building a new house. Land is around 10% of the overall budget (and this is a really sought after area in CA).
We did a lot of research and we were initially thinking of prefab for our home, but we finally decided to go for full custom design. In the end, prefab can really make some costs more predictable, at the cost of some flexibility in the design. Cost-wise, it was almost the same (for our case) but construction would've been faster and more probably more controlled in terms of budget.
My experience is 40%+ in high demand areas. Even in a low demand area, land cost is expected to be 20%+, and this was pre Covid. I imagine it’s much higher now.
You'd have to design it in, but all your components would be preplanned or standardised. You'd know before hand where all the piping and cabling went. Maybe the walls could even be finished in the factory and you just have to attach them together. You could even have standard ways to connect built in storage and kitchens.
In custom houses they actually can and often do pre-plan those things. In practice though plumbers know what they are doing without needing to look at the prints and it isn't important enough to make the plumbers put the pipes where the plan puts them. The architect knows this and rarely puts enough effort into those parts of the plan to get them perfect, just enough to be sure that where space is tight everything can fit.
No plan is perfect the first time. For pre-fab you do a few prototypes and find out and fix what doesn't work, then make the jigs so everything works. For custom work the trademen are smart enough to get it working without extensive pre-planning.
The above only applies to small scale single family houses. As you get into larger buildings: correct planning becomes very important. Eventually things must planed correctly in the design phase or the whole will not work.
If you are willing to pay for it you can get a custom home site built in a week. It typically isn't done this way because you pay experienced people to stand around waiting for things to be ready for them to work. It is much more cost effective to schedule the plumbers for one day and the heating guys the next, then the electricians, even though each only needs about 4 hours, since it gives each plenty of slack time to recover if something takes longer than planed. Technically they can work at the same time, but plumbers go first in practice because drain pipes must go downhill, and it easier for electric to go around everything in the way than to route plumbing or heating around wires. Just in this factor we have spent a couple weeks for things that could be done in a few hours.
Sometimes. The bank generally will need most of the construction time for their paperwork. Most people need to sell an existing house and that too takes time. So for the most part everyone is setup for the time it takes to build normally .
Until you get to site and things don’t quite fit, then the installer bodges it or you wait 3 weeks for the factory to make a new bit. Making stuff on site isn’t as subject to disasters.
Driving costs down is only good if quality isn't compromised too much. In Japan they can compromise quality to the point where they don't expect things to last more than 20 year. In most of the rest of the world people expect a house to last several lifetimes.
What is acceptable is an important question. I've been in houses from 100 years ago, most had significant remodels that clearly did things not anticipated originally and so it is obvious to a knowing eye where the different parts are. On the other hand, construction is expensive and the throw away culture seems wrong too. I'll let you decide where the trade off should be made.
Serious question, but what is a prefab home in the US made of? Here in Germany i think Ytong / aerated concrete would be a good choice, since it is a very good isolator already and you can get a pretty good subsidy if you build your house to a certain standard of energy efficiency. Ytong makes that pretty easy to accomplish. Here is a site in German with all of their houses: https://www.ytong-bausatzhaus.de/haeuser/
Here is a developer of prefab houses showing their plus energy house (meaning it produces more energy than it requires to live in): https://www.hanse-haus.de/en/prefabricated-houses/energy-eff... - these are not made out of aerated concrete though, they use timber panels.
They don't give (at least not that I can find) any specs to how they achieve that efficiency. 20 years ago I looked that up (for a different manufacture) and their vaunted passive house didn't meet the minimum insulation codes for where I lived in the US. The climate in Germany is a lot kinder than US's midwest, and so it probably was passive there.
If you're interested in the economics and history of home construction, with a focus on different levels of prefabrication, Brian Potter has a very relevant substack. Below are a some articles I think are relevant to North Americans looking to understand the state of prefabrication:
[1] reviews prefabrication systems, broken down by technology. The conclusion suggests it's difficult for these systems to reach the scale necessary for success.
[2] explains the primacy of balloon frame construction in North America through the frame of "worse is better."
[3] most recently, a survey of componentization technologies.
I’m not sure what to take from this. In all my 8 years of living in Japan I have yet to see any prefabricated homes being built (and I’ve probably seen hundreds of houses under construction).
Even the most budget builder, say your prefecture's Co-op builder, will use pre cut framing. Our builder, Hinokiya, used factory built frame pieces.
The article's photos of prebuilts is misleading. The majority of prebuilding in Japan is about factory built framing, precut beams, and unit baths. You'll not notice these homes, because they look the same as everything else.
More over: most homes have something prebuilt. Near every bath in every home is a unit bath.
My definition of "unit bath" must be different than yours. A unit bath for me is something I find in a small single room apartment in Japan. It's got the sink, tub, and toilet in the same room almost all entirely molded from one piece.
AFAIK that is not the norm in Japanese houses. A house would like have a toilet in one room, sink in separate room, bath in a 3rd room, and that bath is is about the size of 2 American bathtubs. One area of the tub, and one for watching (a wet floor).
AFAIK that's the norm in a Japanese "house" as well as most modern 2 bedroom or larger apartments. Smaller and/or older places have a "unit bath" (I lived with one for 6 years but my current place has everything separate)
A lot of apartments and houses were built in the area where I used to live in Japan (and will, again, when we can travel again). So I got to see the progress every morning when I walked the dog. As far as I could tell nearly all the new houses and apartments got their bathrooms as a "unit bath", there would be a truck parked nearby and the bath transported as a unit directly from the truck and brought inside.
Talking about prefab, it's supposed to go faster (and that's normally the case), and time is money (more or less so, depending on where you live), but in Japan I once saw a two-story eight-apartment building being raised and completed in less than 7 weeks. Not prefab, not completely anyway - they obviously used modules where the could. But you could still see walls etc. being built the "normal" way.
It was built on what used to be a field, I walked past it every morning when walking the dog. First they put up the (now mandatory I believe) steel framing, then they continued building it piece-by-piece. Floors, wall, roof, solar panels on the roof, doors, windows, plumbing, air conditioners/heating, painted tarmac parking area outside (with two allotted spaces for each apartment), a little roofed area to park bicycles, garbage bin area (again roofed), and cleanup. Less than seven weeks. It's the most astonishing thing I've ever seen when it comes to building not being fully prefab (the exception was the baths - they were installed as units). During the same period a slightly larger apartment building was set up in my home country, near my home there, it took nearly two years and when they were finished it still looked shabby and unfinished outside - no tarmac, no grass, leftover stuff everywhere. Took forever to get that cleaned up.
So, why did it go so extremely fast in Japan? Logistics. Everything arrived on site exactly when it should. Nothing stopped. When stuff for the roof arrived there was already a conveyor belt set up to transport it up to where it was needed. Nobody had to wait for someone else to finish what they were doing. Nothing stopped. They worked Saturdays too, but they didn't work evenings. It was just all incredibly efficient. The someone who worked out the logistics for that project.. I've never seen anything like it.
My first apartment was that kind of unit bath, but my current apartment has a separate sink and toilet, but the bath is definitely one manufactured piece of plastic that contains the full shower area; my wife's mom's house, and my friend's house are both the same, so I figure it's pretty common.
The prefab baths (at least those in Japanese hostels) are superb! Basically no seams where dirt could accumulate and mold grow, robust ergonomic and well thought out furnishings, splashproof doors and lighting.
European accommodations of similar price category have much worse & more dirty bath facilities in comparison.
Does factory built frame pieces mean like pre assembled walls? I watch a lot of construction youtube and timber is generally pre cut and trusses pre assembled so I can’t see how it would speed up much.
Having been in construction site works longer in many cases. When the tradesman has to travel 1 hour to the site, he is going to want to work long hours to get done sooner. (2 12 hours days is = 3 8 hour days). We worked that job because we knew if we refused the builder would find someone else who would - and then we wouldn't get the jobs closer to home either.
This depends greatly on the crew. Some are more willing to work long hours than others.
Is there a catch here? Do these homes have everything you'd expect from a normal home? Like utilities/heating/ventilation/earthquake safety/etc.? What do they compromise on?
The video is showing a metal "lego" form of prefab. These are limited to the premium home builders. Habel, Sekisui, Sumitomo etc. These homes are metal centric, and thus more expensive than wood centric homes.
There are plenty of wooden pre-fab homes, but those center upon pre-cut timbers or other factory manufacturering. Only metal can do the rooms-as-lego-pieces style.
I guess it depends on where you live. I've been in Japan about 20+ years... in the "countryside" I never saw them being built, but here in Shizuoka you see them a lot. Personally, I'd never waste my money on them... the one's I've seen use really cheap materials for walls and doors. I could probably fall THROUGH a door if I tripped...
I've lived in Tokyo for 2 years now and see prefab homes popping up practically nonstop, from makers like Hebel House and Sekisui; and if you walk around any neighborhood it's not hard to spot the seams in the majority of houses, where panels and modules slot in and out.
I suppose for appartments unit baths are prefab? Like just a sealed block with your toilet and bathtub, all in one package.
There's also just like... the shower room itself, even in nicer appartments, that ends up just being a block (see video of installation). Seems like a pretty good way of reducing issues like leaks or weird plumbing issues.
> the shower room itself, even in nicer appartments, that ends up just being a block
These are the best! One of my favorite parts of Japanese apartments. They make so much more sense than standing in a narrow bathtub, next to a toilet, in a room where you can't splash water everywhere.
With that being said, I'll take the insulation and central heating/cooling from western housing.
I live in Japan as well and this it the thing I hate the most! You have half a shower and half a bathtub (unless you go very high end). I'd rather prefer a full shower or a full bathtub instead. Same happens with the toilet, it's a claustrophobic "room" under 1 sqmt, smaller than a ryanair seat. I would strongly prefer either having a bigger shower (no bathtub) + bigger toilet, or a bigger bathtub (no shower floor) + bigger toilet!
Though some Japanese people really want/need a bathtub, so I guess it's just cultural.
Shower + bathtub style is unacceptable for traditional Japanese lifestyle. All people on family take a bath everyday after a shower. They shares same bath water on a day because replacing water on a bath every time is huge waste of water and energy.
It's fine for single person who don't take a bath but just a shower, but it seems to not majority.
Most Japanese hates shower/bathtub + toilet style because it seems to completely nonsense, small space is relatively not a problem. While bathing, why should we see toilet and sniff toilet smell? Also toilet paper and cloths wets by bath. It's more problem for a family because Japanese house very rarely has multiple shower rooms.
Yes, I understand that the dynamics might be different for a family. In Spain normally you'd have 1 bathroom for each 1-2 rooms, so a house/appt with 3 rooms would normally have 2 bathrooms.
I am talking mainly as a single person renting. And of course it's my opinion coming from a different culture.
"While bathing, why should we see toilet" I prefer to see an ample room while doing anything, than to have a wall right in front of me. It's not about the contents of the room, but about having walls less than 1 feet on each side of my face (for the toilet). "Toilet smell" should not be a problem normally with decent ventilation, specially with the industrial fans that Japanese homes seem to have in the bathrooms.
My issue is with overall distribution, where Japanese houses (at least for single person/room) seem to take 30~40% of the floorplan space in what in other countries would be a single room taking 15~20%.
As the others said - you get clean in the shower (or, traditionally, by sitting on a stool and washing yourself with water taken from the tub - not a tub really, a round or square relatively deep bath). When you're as clean as can be you sink your body into a very hot bath. With modern baths you can set the temperature to be exactly what you want. I'm fine with 41C, my wife (as can most Japanese) can manage hotter water and prefers at least 42C except in the summer - cooler is better then.
The long hot bath every evening is vital.. Japanese houses are cold in the winter. No insulation, no bedroom heating, barely above freezing. If I don't take a bath at night I'll be so cold that I'll have trouble sleeping. But after a long bath I'm fine. Not feeling the cold at all and this lasts all night. Seems to help with my health too. No pains, colds are rare. Very much unlike like now, when I'm in my home country waiting for travels to open again.
The tub is for relaxing. The wash area is for washing. The Japanese tradition is first wash outside the tub. When you clean, climb in the tub and relax (like a Jacuzzi)
You don't have to go "very" high end. Nearly everyone I know who isn't under 35 lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with a tub larger than most western tubs and a shower (wash area) which just as much space as that tub
That's tub is the same length and wider than any of the 25 places I've lived in the USA and the shower would just be an attachment in the tub and I wouldn't have the wash area next to the tub.
Well, one thing to keep in mind while reading this is that in Japan, house turnover is unusually high. In the sense that often (or at least much more than in US), a family will tear down and construct a new home when buying a property.
So in such an environment, innovative / different construction techniques are much more testable and able to be experimented with. And when the costs are being compared against full build, the cost of an even expensive prefab unit is not so bad.
I think the implication is that if estate taxes are high, then when someone dies their estate is calculated as hard assets + cash and they have to split that somehow to pay the tax.
If taxes were 25% and the house was worth 200k and the deceased had 20k in cash, you'd end up paying 55k in taxes but only have 20k in cash to pay it with unless the descendants used their own funds. As such, it's easier to sell the house, take the 220k and pay the taxes.
That is common in the US for mansions. You buy the lot for the view and put the house you want on it. Sometimes you remodel the existing house, but that is only if needed to work around some sort of legal issue - the remodel is leave one wall standing, and when done a second remodel to replace that one wall.
For most people the cost of the building is enough that if it is functional you would want to use it.
Also, although still a generalization, quite a different attachment to things, especially buildings, partly due to the routine exposure to natural catastrophes.
I mean, sure people are attached to old buildings and monuments, but even those can be rebuilt more or less often.
I don't known if this is related or a reflection of a similar cultural thinking, but there is the important Ise Jingu shrine that gets torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, even though it is conceptually like 1500 years old.
20 years between rebuilds is just enough to transfer the knowledge and the craft to the next generation - and the craft is what they want to keep. I wrote a bit more about that in another post.
It's one of those things (like pieces of code) where:
A) You should build often enough that the institutional knowledge and practice can be handed down effectively between generations
or
B) Not build until it breaks and the people doing it have to rediscover and properly design it again from scratch.
It's the dangerous middle ground where people need to modify/rebuild something in the meantime, but lost the practice and knowledge about how to do it properly!
Earthquakes and typhoons. Historically buildings in Japan have been transient out of necessity, so it permeates Japanese culture.
Even shrines and temples are periodically rebuilt. For instance the Ise Grand Shrine (one of the most, maybe even the most important shrine of Japan) was rebuilt in 2015, for the 62nd time...
Even the wooden artifacts inside are being rebuilt. I was in Ise watching the rebuild the previous time. Bridges, buildings, everything. The new building is built beside the old building, a new bridge beside the old one and then you tear down the old ones (and that material is then re-used at other smaller shrines). Next time you swap back.
I was wondering about this system until someone in an Ise pub handed me a leaflet where it was all explained.
The Japanese believe that what's important to keep is the knowledge and the craft - how to build the things. The actual buildings aren't important - the history is in the craft, not in the buildings themselves. If nobody keeps building then the "how" is forgotten and the historical buildings will then just degrade and disappear over time anyway. And I understand that completely. I've watched how very experienced people try to recreate the techniques of building old boats, and even after years and believing they "got it right" there are still gotchas (and near-fatal disasters). So the Japanese figure that rebuilding everything every 20 years is just enough to transfer knowledge and the "how to" to younger people. A good millennium of rebuilding is a good track record in that respect.
>The Japanese believe that what's important to keep is the knowledge and the craft - how to build the things. The actual buildings aren't important - the history is in the craft, not in the buildings themselves.
There was an NHK program I saw recently that interviewed a carpenter who specialized in temple construction (I think he built a store front for a restaurant shown on the program, but I can't find it). I was wondering how that could ever be enough work to live off of. But now it makes sense.
A lot of the comments seem to conflate three or four different things:
* built on-site vs. fabricated in (usually) a big woodworking shop
* built according to an off-the-rack architectural design vs. built to the architect and clients' desires
* finished with standard materials (on site) vs. finished with custom floors, kitchen cabinets, paints, triple glazing, whatever (on site)
* completely built (modular) units that are just moved into place -- rare, but it exists, e.g. container homes
For residential construction, as far as I can tell there aren't really any cost savings associated with remote fabrication, but the house might be up faster, quality control is a bit better and foul weather is less likely to mess with the schedule. However, it's completely custom, with no limitations whatsoever. The shell itself might be prefab, but it will be finished on-site with a brick facade or render or wood boards or, heck, quarried stone if you like.
Using a standard design as well as the builder's default choice for your tiles, cabinets, toilets, what have you, will save money because these "start to finish" builders (or sometimes general contractors) buy in bulk and pass on some of the savings, but the more you want to customize, the less you save.
The article talks about a very specific kind of prefab that is highly standardized but where nevertheless even the floor plans can be customized, albeit limited to certain standardized sizes and a small set of options, sort of like how you buy a car.
prefab houses look cool and everything... untill you start get numbers into the pictures.
it's not always clear if thermal performance/efficiency will be better, and they usually are very expensive. they might be cheaper than building a 700 square meters house, but that doesn't help a lot people looking for 70 square meters homes.
This [isn’t the best](1) article] on it but it’s worth saying that there’s a cultural element to crappy Japanese prefab homes: they scrap and rebuilt when they buy property.
What we should learn from Japan is to *not do this*. Most of the world is not on the Pacific Rim and doesn’t have as many earthquakes, sure.
But also, this excavates wealth from working class homeowners. Most Americans’ wealth is tied to their homes, and apparently our willingness to live in an old home. Can you imagine if a home depreciated like a car?! “You loose 20% of your home’s vale as soon as you cross the threshold.” AHH!!! No!
It’s not the same wealth as having $500k in cash or investments, as you always need a roof over your head. It’s not nothing either, as you might be able to sell and move somewhere cheaper, but that’s costing you in maybe moving somewhere you don’t want to be.
The “wealth” of being in a $400k house that goes up to $500k isn’t all that great when the house you were aiming to move into goes from $500k to $700k.
You can also sell and rent or get a reverse mortgage. Your speaking from a place of relative wealth compared to most Americans when you say a 400k house isn't all that great.
There isn’t too much in the article about cost (“affordable” is vaguely mentioned in passing), but it seems like prefab isn’t generally cheap. Does anyone have any insight into why prefab construction isn’t much, much cheaper than a traditional stick build?
It just seems so obvious that it should be cheaper to do as much work in a factory as possible. Home construction seems like one of the few large industries still stuck in the time before the Industrial Revolution: work done by hand by a variety of highly-skilled artisans instead of mass-produced at scale.
Land isn’t the main driver of cost (unless you’re in one of a handful of ultra-desirable locations). Nor is the sitework or the foundation. From a few quick sources, it seems like the structural and finishing work (everything starting with a slab and ending with a finished house) is roughly 80% of the cost. This is exactly the part that seems like it could be done in a factory with a high degree of automation, like with cars and furniture and most manufactured goods.
I think it's just too little volume for the savings to trickle down. The majority of houses built today are still done in traditional ways, very few new homes are prefab homes (in the US and Europe). Most of the people buying prefab homes in these regions today are doing so because it's faster (weeks to months instead of 6 months+) or easier (only need heavy equipment on site for a couple of days), so those benefits can be sold as a premium service.
I am having a new home built right now, and the costs are roughly 50% for the 'shell', e.g. to the level where you have a water proof building with roof and windows, and 50% for all the work inside. For the 'shell' it's actually quite simple work, and doesn't take too much time, it's basically just LEGO :D The complicated parts like doors and windows are made off-site, so when they arrive you just need to fit the house around them. We are having a traditional A-style roof, so the roof joists are made off site too. Most of the costs are on the materials, not the work. Materials that reduce the work like ICF or SIPPs also increase the material costs - in my case to a point greater than what you save in labour costs.
For the interiors nothing can really be prefabricated at volume, as everything is completely custom to the project. That's not going to change unless these Japanese standard measurements that article talks about spread elsewhere. For large projects its a bit different though, I've heard for hotels they sometimes prefabricate large parts of the bathroom and lift it into place before the next floor is put on. That makes sense though as you are building a few hundred things that are exactly the same.
Most houses are done in a factory. When you build you don't buy the individual trees (except for log cabins), you buy lumber that was made to standard sizes in a factory. You don't get raw iron ore, you get screws and nails - both made in factories. The part that is done on site is not a large part of the total effort (well because of the efficiency of factories it might appear that way - but compared to the same without any factory)
What is done on site are things that people want to customize, and so there isn't must opportunity to standardize other than to make all houses the same which people don't like.
> There isn’t too much in the article about cost (“affordable” is vaguely mentioned in passing), but it seems like prefab isn’t generally cheap. Does anyone have any insight into why prefab construction isn’t much, much cheaper than a traditional stick build?
Can anyone recommend good prefab companies that deliver to Scandinavia? The ideal would be a prefab that includes almost everything for a self-sufficient remote life (solar, waste disposal, water treatment).
And, if I understand correctly, the huge amount of lumber imported into Japan each year. When there are shortages of prime building lumber or even more so high-quality wood, such as aircraft spruce, in the US, it is usually blamed, accurately or not, on exports to Japan.
Not mild at all, winters in Hokkaido and the Tohoku region are really cold. Not as much as Siberia or Alaska, of course, but given the lack of proper insulation, either you pay a fortune to heat it up, or be prepared to suffer.
There's actually lots of interesting things about the Japanese housing market: it's not a speculative investment (most houses lose value), much of the housing is designed to be disposable (lifespan 20-30 years), rents are quite affordable even in the biggest cities but commutes are long and size tends to be tiny by Western standards.
But I agree that prefabs aren't particularly interesting.
The long commute can be explained, IMO, in part by the transportation allowance, where employers are allowed to subsidize up to 1000USD/mo of commuting costs.
It makes “commute until you qualify” longer than it might otherwise be. And it doesn’t help that there has long been a tendency to overcentralize in Tokyo, which is very large and can take a while to commute around.
Pretty much here in Japan the houses ARE considered disposable -- at least if you go to buy a house or build a house you quickly realize that the big chunk of money is for the land and even though building your house will be expensive, it'll be worth nearly nothing when/if you go to sell it. (That's why I've hesitated to buy a house here...)
Keep in mind that one factor the rest of the world probably doesn’t have is earthquake codes. Japan has very stringent building regulations and they usually get updated after major events. The most recent revisions were in 1981 and 2000; a house is going to have poor resale value if it will kill you in the event of an earthquake.
Wood works well in earthquakes - when you design for it. Wood is flexible so shaking it won't damage anything structural and so repair is cosmetic. (the above is strongly an over simplification!) That is why Japan builds with wood a lot instead of brick/rock: after the earthquake you have a safe place to live while you repair it. Repairs might be so expensive that you rebuild, but at least you can a safe roof while building the new place. Not to mention if you were inside you don't die of building collapse.
> Wood works well in earthquakes - when you design for it.
I highly doubt that "designing for it" really beats inherently stronger building materials to specifically choose wood with its many, many other disadvantages over something else.
Actually it does. Wood is flexible in ways the most of your stronger materials are not. Iron works, but it is more expensive and doesn't really have any advantage until you are going tall (tall being about 6 floors, but consult an engineer for details)
There is a reason Japan traditionally used wood, it works well in general. The design for it parts of wood are not hard - I don't know Japanese history, but I'd guess they figured it out well B.C.
> Actually it does. Wood is flexible in ways the most of your stronger materials are not
You don't need to flex, and dissipate energy if you can simply withstand earthquake G forces through strength alone. And even if you do, steel is obviously better at energy dissipation.
Problem is things that don't flex also don't absorb the energy of earthquakes. Wood is more than strong enough and withstands earthquakes. Same for steel. Not true for brick, which is really a terrible building material, and almost always what people mean when they say we should build of something stronger than wood.
But these days there's a steel frame keeping the top storey from falling down into the lower storey, as will typically happen in an earthquake with older style homes.
> it is an excuse to not focus on the real problem
> the housing market and the insane amount of speculation around it
Couldn't agree more.
> i don't understand this pseudo fascination for japan
Because people who've not lived there usually have entirely the wrong idea about it, and articles like this one with its buzzwords (the first paragraph is almost parody) and lack of context (number one would be the low quality of housing in Japan, it'd be literally criminal if anyone with the power to look into it would), add in a mix of (seemingly) impenetrable language, stereotypes from the 1980s about futuristic technology, and endless animes about robots deepening that, and you end up at "wow, Japan!"
Meanwhile, I freeze my arse off every winter and curse the build quality daily.
I also find this strange. Not only are prefab homes done everywhere else in the world, but prefab homes and single family homes in general are not that common in Japan.
If you were going to take any lessons from Japan regarding housing, wouldn't it be more along the lines of how to build high density housing cost effectively in coordination with world class public transportation infrastructure?
From a US perspective, this article was quite eye opening.
I was actually walking around a prefab home lot this afternoon. They firmly occupy the poorest rung of the housing market.
In Japan the cultural and build quality issues seem to have been surmounted. Very interesting.
Adding, I’d be a lot more impressed with the idea we should “learn lessons” from Japanese Prefab if they had even a remotely volatile climate like most of the USA does.
What is the average temp swing per year in Japan? Like a 40 degree (F) swing over the year? Lol, ok, show me those amazing looking modern prefabs for places there you get 60 degree (F) swing in day and let’s see how they’re doing. Or that cool aluminum place with 2ft of snow on it. Etc.
Not that we can’t learn lessons, but I think structures just need a lot less engineering in Asia compared to other places.
I find this quite funny as from my place in the world (Scandinavia) I see US housing as exactly how you describe houses in Asia. Around here a house that isn't built with double brick walls are hard to find on the market and it is mostly sheds and garages that are built in the US wood framing/panel style.
Edit to add that I'm not saying wood is bad. I love wood houses.
That is more an issue of cost than anything... If your choices are between building a wood framed house that you can afford and will last a hundred years or much more, versus not being able to afford to build at all... Well, you go for stick and frame.
Because they are so popular, they are even less expensive- construction crews experienced in building double brick walls are scarce to non existent around here.
On a final note, tornados. We get quite a few of them around here... The odds of actually being hit by one are low, and yet it does happen, and I doubt brick walls would hold up much better facing the full fury of those.
Yeah standard wall insulation even in southern Sweden now is ~300mm/1ft. Compared to just the end of the 90a/start of the millennium the norm was 100mm less than that. Not sure what the end game is for wall insulation but it’s rapidly increasing too.
Double brick walled home do not hold up well to earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes, and anything built in the US is probably going to have to be prepared for one of the above.
How come a double brick home would be worse for tornadoes and hurricanes? At a pinch i would say the first weaknesses would be windows and roof, not the walls.
> I think structures just need a lot less engineering in Asia compared to other places.
That's an odd assertion. Why do you think that Asia, a massive continent with literally billions of people and wildly varying climates and terrains across it, needs less engineering of structures than other places?
What are you talking about? Japan is so obsessed with the its four seasons that some Japanese people seem to believe people outside of Japan haven't heard of the concept. The climate varies widely depending on where you are (i.e., northern and southern Japan have quite different climates), but there isn't really a shortage of areas in Japan with bitter, snowy winters and hot, humid summers.
This winter, my Japanese city in the humid sub-tropics (yes, it's true) dropped to 0ºC if not a little lower, and last summer hit 40ºC several times. We also had a rainy season where the humidity is in the upper echelons. And there's the typhoon season too.
A quick search would've saved you all those rightful downvotes.
Well, it depends where in Japan you go to, like the US.
Hokkaido in the north gets lots of snow, the south like Osaka and beyond gets hot in the summer.
I only spent a year in Hokkaido but it was a pretty hot summer when I was there... basically the weather over the course of a year wasn't that different than what I was used to in Massachusetts.
Japan has a far more challenging environment for structures than many other countries, with high humidity, temperature swings, typhoons, and earthquakes being the obvious ones.
Where I lived the temperature varied from minus 2C in February to plus 38C or so in August. It's hotter elsewhere (when we had 35C they had 42C north of Tokyo). And the hot period is very humid as well. 80+% relative humidity and 35C is hard. Drop to 60% and it's much easier. The humidity is a huge issue - unless you're airing the house every day you'll get mold and worse. I've seen mushrooms grow straight out of the wood inside homes.
I don’t know what your attitude is about, but while prefab homes are done the world over, in the west they are often the poorest parts of society forced to live there due to no other options.
Culturally, this seems to be quite different.
This isn't really true unless you are equating the US with "the west".
There are many German and Dutch companies that make high-end pre-fabricated houses and walls that sell not only locally, but abroad.
Many factors contribute to the purchasing decisions of quality pre-fabricated housing materials, of which price is only one (and probably isn't even a factor at the high-end).
I would imagine that insurance companies have much more influence over government regulation of building codes than construction crews do. After all, insurance companies are the ones that have to pay out if the house doesn't hold up.
It's State governments that cover residential construction issues. All of them have laws and limitations and in fact have an pooled insurance fund (paid for by contractor license fees etc...)
Japanese homes have very few windows and those they have are for light rather than looking out. Japanese are very conscious of their privacy and are not comfortable with windows that others can see into their homes. Waterfront property with windows is not in demand at all.
My experience of new housing is was that it uses primarily whole wood that is visible in the finished structure rather than engineered wood or framing that would be covered with plaster or gyp rock and paint in the finished home.
Japanese homes are often drafty which is ok because they are not heated through out but usually have a kotatsu to heat the occupants locally. This works well enough for heat in winter but not as well with air conditioning in summer which are a killer in most cities.
Most houses have dark gray or dark brown exteriors but one in a thousand will be bright yellow. What's with that?