&gt; <i>Other countries, like Japan &amp; Germany, treat housing as a consumable good or even something that depreciates.</i><p>Vancouver isn&#x27;t a country. The country is Canada, and Canada has places where your real estate will depreciate, like somewhere in the middle of Saskatchewan. How properties value over time is determined by the market conditions. Neither Canada, nor Germany nor Japan are communist states which flat-out dictate your property value.<p>The values of the <i>buildings</i> on a property themselves depreciate as they age, everywhere in the world. Nobody will pay as much for a run-down place that needs demolition as for a newly built or renovated, &quot;move in condition&quot; place. That doesn&#x27;t matter so much if the property is valued 10:1 or more over the structures on it.<p>Tokyo is an ambiguous term because it simultaneously refers to a metropolitan area in which some 37 million people live, which spreads far beyond the city, and the property market prices and dynamics differ.<p>Japan as a whole went through general <i>deflation</i> through the 1990&#x27;s and early 2000&#x27;s and it may be returning. Its population has also been shrinking.