The Impact of Household Structure on Tokyo Housing Market during COVID-19

Abstract Book of the 10th International Conference on Applied Research in Business, Management and Economics

Year: 2026

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The Impact of Household Structure on Tokyo Housing Market during COVID-19

Kai-Bin Chen, Ti-Ching Peng

ABSTRACT:

As the impact of COVID-19 affects the entire world, it has caused significant damage to economic development and reshaped urban population structures, particularly in aging nations like Japan. This research aims to examine the relationship between external shocks, such as COVID-19, and the housing market through spatial econometrics, including the Spatial Lag Model (SLM), Spatial Error Model (SEM), and the SARAR Model. Analyzing housing transaction data from 2019 to 2021 in the Tokyo 23 wards, we found that if transactions were located in the central area of the 23 wards after the onset of COVID-19, housing prices were higher than before COVID-19. Furthermore, an increase in the dependency ratio by 1 percentage point caused housing prices to decrease by around 2.4% to 2.7%. This suggests that COVID-19 impacted the Tokyo 23 wards in a different way from the rest of the world. The housing market in the Tokyo 23 wards shows strong resilience to external shocks but remains vulnerable to the ageing issue. Although external shocks did not cause severe disruptions for the Tokyo 23 wards, how to face the ageing issue still needs to be addressed and resolved.

Keywords: Ageing; External Shock; Regional Economics; Residential; Spatial Econometrics