JAPAN TIMES – More development taking place in towns and villages near Hokkaido’s Niseko area
This summer, in a residential house surrounded by fields of potatoes and beets in a village called Makkari in Hokkaido’s Shiribeshi region, Henry Blake Turner, a 40-year-old from the U.K., started a real estate company (Habitat Hokkaido) – the only one in the village. The agency deals with properties in the village and the towns of Kyogoku and Rankoshi, as well as other towns in the vicinity of Niseko.
Turner came to Japan in October 2016 and has worked at a foreign real estate company for non-Japanese in the town of Kutchan. As he has started his own company, relatively lower land prices in Makkari village caught his attention.
In the Hirafu district, which is the central part of the Niseko area, the number of suitable land plots for development is decreasing year by year as more hotels and lodgings are constructed. As a result, land prices for the few remaining lots have skyrocketed, which at times go over ¥1 million per 3.3 square meters.
But Turner believes there is more room for growth in Makkari, given its close proximity to both Niseko and Rusutsu ski resorts popular with tourists.
