Yokohama vs. Karuizawa: Market Weirdness
Why Yokohama dominates by market cap, and why Karuizawa's condo pricing looks so odd.
Note - no AI was used to write this post, only to make the visuals.
Yokohama - The Market Cap King
Yokohama has one of the largest market caps out there in the dataset, aggregated across land, condos, and houses.
Yokohama (Totsuka ward specifically) is also where this project first started. During a study abroad semester at Meiji Gakuin University in the Spring of 2017, I scraped Airbnb listings for a final project in a Japanese Economic History class. That experiment eventually was revisited in April 2025 and grew into Nipponhomes.
Also here's a fun pic of me out drinking with the boys from back that 2017 study abroad trip (left to right: me, Nick, Thanh, Tom). Note - it was due to this trip that I rarely drink nowadays (had an instance where I drank half a bottle of Jack and was sick/hungover for like 3 days).
Karuizawa, wyd...?
One thing that strikes me about these stats is that Karuizawa has a really low used condo supply, but pretty high price / sq m. Why aren't the developers snatching up the land and just building condos out there? Regulations? Zoning? (I know nothing!!)
Recently, I met another proptech founder in the space who lives in Karuizawa who recently exited a company in the Bay Area prior to moving out there. He wouldn't stop talking about it - the great QoL, healthcare, schools and lots of nearby powder for the winters. Might not be a bad place to build a family in!