Apparently, buying and selling condominiums and relocating to more valuable properties in the city center is called “mansion sugoroku.” The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper’s “Tokyo Transformation” series covers this topic in detail.

Thirty or so years ago, when I was still in high school, there was a movement known as “land flipping,” a popular investment method for quickly flipping properties, driving up prices and making a profit.

As a high school student in Hokkaido, both “land flipping” and the “real estate bubble” were stories from a distant world seen on television, and were completely unrelated to me. However, as we all know, the bubble eventually burst, ushering in a long period of economic stagnation that would lead to the lost 30 years.

Experts seem to have different views on the duration of the bubble economy, but from my perspective, it lasted about three years, from 1987 to 1990.

The bubble-era crowds who reveled in “land flipping” disappeared without a trace after three years of revelry.

So, what will become of the game known as “mansion sugoroku”?
I have neither land nor a home, and I am in exactly the same situation as I was in high school. To me, “Mansion Sugoroku” is a faraway world, a completely unrelated story. However, if these games take a turn for the worse and we enter another long-term economic slump, I will be affected to some degree, so I cannot help but watch developments closely these days.
Experts in the field might say that land speculation and “Mansion Sugoroku” are fundamentally different in nature, so there will be no valves that pop, and there are currently no blind spots.
However, just before the bubble burst, many experts were confident that the Japanese economy had no blind spots. I recall that the bubble burst within a few months of its collapse.
Perhaps I am miserly and overly pessimistic. But I cannot help but be cautious. (Kei Kitajima)

※Translating Japanese articles into English with AI