Housing Starts YoY

Housing Starts YoY is the year on year percent change in new dwelling units in Japan, published monthly since 1951. A dwelling unit means one home, so one apartment block counts as many units. MLIT, meaning the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, compiles it as a census, meaning a full count with no sampling. Figures are planned counts at filing, not finished homes, exclude buildings of 10 square metres or less, and rising starts often lead the economy.

Results appear one month later at month end at 1400 Japan time for the prior month, with year totals each late January and late April. It is monthly under the Building Dynamics Statistics Survey and covers filings from one calendar month, plus calendar year and fiscal year totals. Each release adds nonresidential starts, meaning offices shops factories and warehouses, plus a trends note, an investment estimate and detailed tables on e-Stat. Corrections are reposted when needed, and rising starts are read as an early signal for the economy.

Moves come from four demand sources plus scale, seasonal reading, building detail and region.

• Owned homes: houses built by individuals for their own residence.
• Rented homes: houses built for renting, showing landlord and investor supply.
• Issued homes: houses built by employers to house workers, with extra splits by method, structure, funds source and region.
• Built-for-sale homes: houses built for sale, split into condominiums, meaning flats for sale, and detached houses.
• Floor area of started dwellings: total started floor space, showing the scale of new housing.
• Seasonally adjusted annualised starts: monthly starts adjusted for seasonal patterns and scaled to a yearly rate.

The August 2024 release published 30 September 2024 showed 66823 starts down 5.1% year on year for the 4th straight monthly fall. Owned homes fell 6.6% to 19601 units for the 33rd straight monthly fall and rented homes fell 1.4% to 28939 units. Built for sale homes fell 12.0% to 17240 units with condominiums at 7501 units down 5.0% and detached houses at 9578 units down 17.4%.

Floor area fell 8.8% to 5040 thousand square metres while the adjusted annualised rate rose 1.0% to 788000 units for the 2nd straight rise. It was partly corrected 30 April 2025, and the lesson is that a falling yearly headline can sit beside a rising trend.

1. Collect filings: gather every housing filing under Article 15 Paragraph 1 of the Building Standard Law for the reference month across Japan.
2. Sum counts: count dwelling units by type and sum floor space by simple addition in the Housing Starts Survey, with no weighting and no sampling.
3. Compute yearly change: subtract prior year same month units from current month units, divide by prior year same month units and multiply by 100.
4. Adjust for seasons: adjust the monthly series with the Census Bureau X-12-ARIMA method, meaning a standard seasonal filter, and scale it to an annual rate.
5. Illustrative example: August 2024 had 66823 starts and August 2023 had 70413. 66823 minus 70413 is minus 3590, divided by 70413 is minus 0.05099, times 100 is minus 5.1%.