Apparently, ¥1 Billion Properties Are Selling

My wife works for a real estate company.

Today, while we were driving to Tokyo, we began talking about the state of the real estate market.

She told me that expensive properties used to sell quite well, but recently they have stopped moving.

Apparently, the system for transferring money from China overseas has changed, and many of the Chinese buyers who had been purchasing high-priced properties have disappeared from the market.

The properties most affected are those priced between ¥300 million and ¥500 million.

That price range used to sell, but now there is almost no movement at all.

Meanwhile, the market that remains active is apparently for properties priced at more than ¥1 billion.

Properties worth ¥300 million do not sell, while properties worth ¥1 billion do.

It is a world I do not really understand.

⸻

My wife’s company has only recently begun handling properties worth around ¥500 million.

By then, however, the market in that price range had already slowed down.

At the same time, it is not easy for the company to start handling properties worth more than ¥1 billion.

To be honest, I cannot even imagine what a ¥1 billion property looks like.

I find myself wondering whether there really is any property that someone would want badly enough to pay that much money for it.

And yet, in today’s luxury real estate market, properties priced above ¥1 billion are apparently the ones seeing the most activity.

Many real estate companies seem to understand that they will have to aim for that market if they want to survive.

But handling properties on that scale requires considerable capital and the right connections.

In the end, only major corporations or small, highly skilled teams specializing in that market can enter it.

My wife’s company is an ordinary midsized business with around 200 to 300 employees.

⸻

Giant corporations and small, elite teams.

The divide between the two will probably continue to grow.

At the same time, I suspect that more people like me will begin working independently or starting businesses on a very small scale.

In the past, there were many things that one person could not do alone.

You had to hire people and build an organization to operate as a company.

But with AI, you can ask for advice, conduct research, organize information, and delegate a certain amount of work.

Things that once required dozens or even hundreds of people can now be done by one person, or perhaps a handful.

If that happens, companies employing an awkwardly large number of people may gradually find themselves struggling.

To some extent, that may be unavoidable.

Still, a society in which individuals can do more on their own is not necessarily a bad thing.

More people will be able to think for themselves, make their own decisions, and create something of their own.

Perhaps that will lead not only to economic growth, but also to a flourishing of culture.

⸻

AI is another kind of intelligence—one that humanity has never worked alongside before.

There are also Terminator-like visions of the end of the world that many people worry about.

But for now, I find it difficult to imagine a future in which AI rejects coexistence with humanity and destroys everything.

Of course, no one knows what will actually happen.

Even so, I find the prospect of humans and AI seeking mutual coexistence and prosperity far more exciting than a relationship in which humans use AI and AI uses humans.

By the time we finished talking, we had arrived in Tokyo.

I still had no idea what a ¥1 billion property might look like.