Hide-and-Seek Sales…

Since this year is the Year of the Horse, I was thinking of getting some kind of lucky charm, so I thought of a Somès Saddle horse keychain and decided to buy one.
Apparently, they aren’t being produced anymore, so I had them check inventory at shops nationwide to secure one for me. I intend to use it with care.

Cute ♪

I know nobody cares about an old guy’s bag talk, but not only the shoulder bag I carry, the contents are all Somès Saddle too.
Wallet, notepad, business card holder, seal case, and tissue case—all of it (lol).
The price is lower than luxury high brands, but the actual object is more solid than those high brands, and they last a long time.
Of course, if you bring them or send them to the Sunagawa factory, they will handle maintenance and repairs.

You get what I’m trying to say, right?
Evo Home houses are the same way… (lol)

But I’m not building them anymore… (boom)

So anyway….

Totally changing the subject: I had some free time, so I dug into the inventory situation of subdivision housing (spec homes) in Kitami City a little bit.
The trigger was that advertisements in ‘Densho-bato’ have been standing out like crazy lately.
Densho-bato is a free paper that has been running in Kitami for ages…
But seriously… ‘Densho-bato’ in this day and age? (lol).
We live in the era of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They are desperately posting information in a free paper filled with obituary notices, trying to reach a young generation where watching videos on smartphones is the norm.
Well, whatever, let’s leave that aside…

When I looked into it, there are 40 buildings in confirmed inventory alone. If we include the ones under the surface I haven’t tracked down yet, there are probably another 10.
Analyzing the contents of these 40 buildings looks like this:
Price range: 20 million to 40 million yen range
Average price: Approx. 29.06 million yen
Median: Approx. 29 million yen
Perhaps 29 million yen looks like the decision-making borderline for end users.
In core cities nationwide, the standard inventory for spec homes is “1 to 2 units” per 10,000 people, but Kitami is currently easily exceeding 3 units.
Looking at the numbers, it’s clearly an abnormal situation with a lot of “unsold leftovers”.

Why is inventory piling up this much? And why isn’t it selling?
At the very least, I can say “The reason it’s not selling is not because of the region, nor is it because of the economy.” That much is clear.

There are two main reasons…
One is not looking at the end user. There are far too many floor plans and buildings that lack storylines or planning, built with the mindset of “if we just build it, it will sell.”
The other is that the number of builders and salesmen who have stopped thinking has increased. Making excuses like “The price…”, “The economy…”, “The Mayor…”, if you ignore the political economy occurring in modern society and the thought processes of end users, you won’t sell things that otherwise could be sold.
Perhaps another cause is being so immersed in the internet age that they no longer possess “original thought”.

In my imagination, it’s like that Samantha-Something shop at Haneda Airport where they cheerfully harass you with “Welcome!! … What are you looking for?!”, following you around until it becomes a game of hide-and-seek with the customer in the store…
It feels like there are plenty of Showa-era housing salesmen in Kitami who think *that* is what sales is—guys in pointy leather shoes and tight suits. (No wonder they’re hated (lol))

Certainly, the number of housing starts has plummeted compared to the past. Around Heisei 5-6 (approx. 30 years ago), 1,500 to 1,600 houses were built annually in Kitami. Compared to that, I predict the number of confirmation applications by this March will be an 80% decrease from that time.
You hear voices lamenting “So the market has shrunk,” but if you research a little more you’ll see that the number of builders building houses has also decreased by about 75% compared to 30 years ago.
In other words, the balance of supply and demand hasn’t actually changed that much between now and then.
Furthermore, this is different from the long deflationary era where price cuts were forced. Now, it is undeniably inflation. In an era where it’s natural for prices to go up, if “things aren’t selling,” it is proof that there is something fundamentally, significantly wrong with the way of thinking.

What on earth is that mistake? The reason is simple…
To be continued next time 💛