Japan land prices fall 6.2%
Advertiser News Services
TOKYO — A square meter patch of land in Japan's most expensive neighborhood would cost a wallet-busting $95,484, even as land prices in most of the country tumbled for a ninth straight year in 2000.
Associated Press
Land prices fell an average 6.2 percent to $1,100 a square meter (11 square feet) last year, the National Tax Administration said.
Japan's priciest parcel fronts this Tokyo store. A square meter (11 square feet) of land there costs $95,484.
Japan's most expensive parcel of land, in front of the Kyukyodo stationery store selling handmade Japanese paper in the Ginza shopping area of downtown Tokyo, rose 1.4 percent a square meter. At that price, a football field would carry a price tag of roughly $514 million.
The parcel of land has been ranked as Japan's most expensive piece of real estate for 16 years.
The rest of the nation's 46 highest-priced parcels of land lost value, declining 17 percent as a group.
Prices fell across the country, with the biggest decline coming in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands. Prices there fell 11.1 percent.
The agency uses land prices to assess property and inheritance taxes.
Correction: One square meter is approximately 11 square feet. Because of an editor's error, the square footage was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
