A cheap 4LDK apartment is now a “millionaire’s condominium! Harumi Flag, the former site of the Olympic Village, is being sold one after another.

The rooms of Harumi Flag, a large-scale residence in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, which was used as an athletes’ village for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, are being resold one after another.

Harumi Flag, with a total of 4,145 units for sale, was put on the market at an unbelievably low price for a Chuo Ward address, due to the fact that the site of the former athletes’ village was repurposed. The number of applicants for some of the units exceeded 200 times the number of those selected by lottery.

At the time of the sale, Harumi Flag was priced at approximately 80 million yen for an 85-square-meter room. It is almost impossible to find a condominium with a price per tsubo of 3 million yen in the vicinity of Ginza and Shimbashi, so it was inevitable that there would be a rush of prospective buyers,” said a real estate agent.

The initial plan was to renovate the building after the Olympics were over in 2020, and hand it over to the buyer around March 2011. However, due to the outbreak of the new coronavirus, the Olympics were postponed by one year, and the handover was also pushed back.

In the meantime, the price of condominiums in central Tokyo continued to soar. The war in Ukraine has spurred a sharp rise in the cost of materials, and condominium prices show no sign of slowing down. This situation made Harumi Flag’s affordability stand out even more,” said a desk clerk of a national newspaper’s economics department.

Some initially questioned the location of the building, which is a 16-minute walk from Kachidoki Station on the Toei Oedo Line, the nearest station, and is on reclaimed land by the sea. However, as new condominiums with good cost performance sold from one end of the market to the other, Harumi Flag’s popularity grew.

Under these circumstances, there have been a number of cases where contractors, seeing the price hikes as an opportunity, have resold their properties. What is interesting is the selling price. A look at a major housing information website shows that a 61.06-square-meter property with an asking price in the 50 million yen range was sold for a whopping 91 million yen.

Also, the selling price of a 4LDK, 100.15 square meter property listed on the same site is 167 million yen. The property was turned into a billion-dollar condominium by the so-called “immediate resale” method, in which the property is resold immediately without moving in (as of the time of writing).

The sales price list at the time of the sale shows that a room of the same type was priced at 87.9 million yen. In other words, the price has approximately doubled in a quick turnaround. The unit price per tsubo also jumped up to the 5 million yen level,” said a real estate agent.

Will buyers really appear for Harumi Flag with the “resale price” added to the price? Rie Kusakabe, a critic of condominium trends, says, “In a similar case, a buyer was found in the Harumi Flag.

A similar case is the “City Tower Shinagawa” completed in ’08.’ The building was sold at an unbelievably low price because it came with a 72-year fixed-term land lease, and some rooms had a lottery multiplier of several hundred times. Therefore, a condition was set that resale and rentals were prohibited for five years, and that the property was to be used exclusively for one’s own residence, and even a buy-back clause was attached that if a violation was found , the developer would buy back the property minus a 10% penalty . Since Harumi Flag has no such restrictions, one buyer after another must have appeared to sell.

As for the all-important price, there is a possibility that buyers will be found even if the unit price per tsubo is in the 5 million yen range. In neighboring areas, tawawamans in the 6 million yen per tsubo range are also being sold, and the number of properties for sale is also becoming depleted. With the soaring prices of condominiums in central Tokyo over the past few years, some people may find it acceptable if resale prices are added to the price.”

When will the resale frenzy stop?