Frontiers of Computer Vision Technologies on Real Estate Property Photographs and Floorplans

This article describes frontier efforts to apply deep learning technologies, which is the greatest innovation of research on artificial intelligence and computer vision, to image data such as real estate property photographs and floorplans. Specifically, attempts to detect property photographs that violate regulations or were misclassified, or to extract information that can be used as new recommendation features from property photographs, were mentioned. Besides, this article introduces an innovation created by providing data sets for academic communities.

Guiding Urban Facilities and Functions in Compact Mixed-Use Development from the Perspective of Residents

This article discusses the development of compact and functionally integrated urban environments from the perspective of local residents, focusing on their psychological evaluations of mixed land use and performance-based regulation. It demonstrates the significance of residents’ perceptions and attitudes in the achievement of flexibility required for urban planning in a shrinking society. To promote planned concentration of various functions in an urban area in an appropriate way, as in the development of compact cities in a multi-polar network advocated by the Location Normalization Plan, it will have more importance than ever to conceive planning that takes the characteristics of both a region and its residents into account.

Professional Practices in Fixed Assets Valuation and Assessor Education in North America: Suggestions for Japan

This paper examined and compared the situation of and problems with professional practices in fixed assets valuation and assessor education between North America (the United States and Canada) and Japan. Because professional practice in tax assessment takes place within individual municipalities in North America, the opportunities for external experts to participate in the practice are limited. Moreover, external institutions and universities that provide professional education educated the assessors who were in charge of these professional practices. As a result, the costs of professional practices in tax assessment and assessor education and training have been kept low. In Japan, there has been no foundation through which to foster experts within individual municipalities, so much professional practice is outsourced; consequently, this practice has become ineffective and unstable. Thus, Japan can refer to the North American system of providing complete professional tax assessment services within each municipality, as well as the fostering of experts through external organizations.

Realities and Challenges of Land Issues in the Era of Depopulation

Abandoned and unclaimed land has emerged as a major policy issue in Japan, where the population is dwindling and property values are falling in many areas, including big cities. This article analyzes this alarming issue using the results of a nationwide survey conducted by the author targeting 1719 local authorities, which revealed a disconnection between the existing landownership system and rapid demographic change. Policy initiatives are needed to address three basic challenges, namely, how to get people to register title transfers when they inherit real estate; how to protect and manage land that has no immediate prospect for use; and how to improve the data collection and management infrastructure.

A Study on the Relation Between Residential Land Value and the Distance to the Center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (1970–2016)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between residential land value and the distance to the center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area from 1970 to 2016. The result shows three trends in the relation: (1) residential land value had increased at all standard sites even while the interest rate was kept high; (2) when the interest rate has become lower, the shorter the distance to the center became, the higher residential land value has increased; and (3) recently the areas where residential land value fluctuate has become narrower. This paper discusses about these trends.

Introduction: City Planning and New Technology

In Part III, titled “City Planning and New Technology,” we discuss two topics, namely, compact cities and real estate technology in Japan.Promotion of compact cities is regarded as a high priority issue in urban policies in the era of population decrease. The Act on Special Measures concerning Urban Reconstruction in 2014 was revised to institutionalize the framework for the Location Normalization Plan, a plan for local governments to build compact cities to manage population decline and aging urban infrastructure while placing less burden on environment. Three chapters are devoted to issues related to this movement. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_18, Ishikawa (2020) discusses how urban functions can be guided by residents’ perspectives. To build a compact city, various day-to-day services must be placed proximal to residential areas; however, some services must be placed at a certain distance from residences because of land use restrictions. Therefore, we must determine the uses allowed in residential areas. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_19, Morimoto (2020) discusses the history of major contributions made by the development of transportation facilities to urban spread, the important role of traffic facilities to guide land use toward desirable purposes, and impact of self-driving vehicles on land use. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_20, Ogushi (2020) explains how the Location Normalization Plan in Niigata City was formed in detail.Real estate technology refers to real estate business-related services that use new technology. Several new services based on new technology have been introduced in the field of real estate in Japan. Three chapters are devoted to issues related to real estate technology. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_21, Narimoto (2020) explains the outline of real estate technology services in Japan and identifies legal problems associated with handling of information. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_22, Nishio and Ito (2020) report on creating a sky view factor calculating system that uses Google Street View. Sky view factor is a term that refers to a configuration factor for the amount of sky in a hypothetical hemisphere. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_23, Kiyota (2020) explains the transition of neural network research and characteristics of deep learning and introduces a system that detects category inconsistencies in real estate property photographs submitted by real estate companies by using deep learning and a system that detects indexes associated with ease of living based on property photographs.

Introduction: Real Estate Tax System and Real Estate Market in Japan

This introduction summarizes chapters of Part II. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_9, Yamamoto (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:88–96, 2018) has compared between the street method, the asset valuation adopted for the imposition of property tax in Japan, and the computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) method generally adopted in North America focusing on education and training of valuators. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_10, Yamazaki (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:97–101, 2018) argues that one of the major causes for relatively low density use of land in the city in Japan is the land tax system. He focuses on property tax and examines defects of the tax from view of economist. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_11, Kobayashi (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:129–138, 2018), taking an actual example, has examined difference between precise legal interpretation of ‘exemption from real estate acquisition tax due to purpose of use’ and taxation practices conducted by local administrative bodies. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_12, Shirakawa and Okoshi (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:88–96, 2017) have shown that the real estate companies were committed to transactions as dual agencies to whatsoever degree, and analyzed attributes of real estate brokerage companies which are able to be dual agencies and how such dual agency affects contract price.In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_13, Ueno (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:97–105, 2017) has analyzed impacts of the macroeconomic conditions on the land price gradient curves which are estimated using real estate data of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area in 1970, 1976, 1985, 1988, 1994, 2008, 2010, and 2016. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_14, Komatsu (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:110–118, 2017) has analyzed impacts that refurbishment of existing apartment has on possible increase in rent using the multinomial probit model and the Tobit model. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_15, Hanazato (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:119–128, 2017) has shown that around 90% of condominium reconstruction cases are predictable using the estimated discriminant function in terms of objective real estate data only. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-15-8848-8_16, Ota et al. (Jpn J Real Estate Sci 31:109–119, 2018) have analyzed determinants of rent for rental house, office, and shop within 10-min walking distance from Shibuya Station in Tokyo. Multiple regression analyses are conducted and have shown that space syntax (SS) measures (Hillier and Hanson, The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984) significantly affect rent as well as conventional location attributes.

Legal Issues of Land Plots with Unknown Owners

This paper describes how and why owner unknown lands have been increasing in Japan’s shrinking population and proposes some ideas on the solution to the relating legal issues.

Empirical Analysis on the System Revisions of Judicial Real Estate Auctions: Comparison with General Real Estate Trading

This paper shows the effect of a series of system revisions of judicial real estate auction in the 2000s on three factors: bid acceptance ratio, number of bidders, and highest bid. Using multiyear data of auctions from multiple district courts, I estimate the improvement of the three factors by the revision.Furthermore, comparing real estate auction data with voluntary sale and general real estate trading data, I find that the selling price in auction was greatly lower than the price in voluntary sale even after the system revisions. Based on the empirical results, I suggest about necessity of further system revisions.

Dual Agency, Commission Levels, and the Effect on Sale Price in Residential Real Estate Market: A Questionnaire Survey on Real Estate Brokers in Japan

In residential real estate market, agents have an incentive to steer their clients to their own listings or buyers rather than offering the best value transaction, which is derived from allowing dual agency and information asymmetry among buyers, sellers, and agents. We estimated the commission levels and sale prices of real estate brokers through a questionnaire survey and found that seven out of ten brokers are closing dual-agency deals and lowering sale prices. We could not find any effects of the number of employees, location of office, and major types of contract on dual agency.