【Aging, safety net and fiscal crisis in Japan】No.196: The Housing Vacancy Rate across the Country was 13.6% in 2018

In Column No. 134, I explained that the housing vacancy rate across the country was 13.5%, based on 2013 statistics. The government conducts a housing survey every five years. In April 2019, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced the results of the 2018 survey. As shown in Figure 1, the number of houses in Japan increased from 21.09 million in 1963 to 62.42 million in 2018. However, during the same period, the vacancy rate also rose from 2.5% to 13.6%, with the number of unoccupied houses reaching 8.46 million in 2018 (Figure 2).