Tokyo Apartment Prices per Square Meter: Reading the Published Data

Guide

What do Tokyo apartment prices per square meter look like in the published data? As of September 24, 2026, the most recent figure for resale apartments sold in Tokyo's 23 wards was an average of about ¥1.33 million per square meter for August 2026, from 1,265 reported sales. That was 0.3% lower than in August 2025, a change the publisher described as roughly flat.^[1] Before you use a number like this to judge an asking price or the Tokyo real estate market as a whole, check three things: whether it is a sold, asking or new-build price, whether it is an average or an index, and how many sales sit behind it.

This guide explains how to read the main published statistics. It describes past figures only and does not forecast prices.

Four series, four different questions

This guide looks at four published series. They measure different things and come out on different schedules.

Series	Publisher	What it prices	Which month a figure describes	Latest month published by September 24, 2026
Resale apartments sold	Real Estate Information Network for East Japan (REINS), a public-interest foundation designated by the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism	Prices agreed in sales reported to REINS	The month the sale was reported	August 2026
Resale apartments newly listed	REINS	Asking prices of apartments newly registered for sale	The month the listing was registered	August 2026
New-build condominiums	Real Estate Economic Institute, a private research company	Developers' prices for new units released for sale	The month the units were released	August 2026
Residential property price index	Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT)	A quality-adjusted index of transaction prices, not a price in yen	The month of the transaction	December 2025

REINS is the network on which member real estate agents register properties for sale and report completed sales. Its apartment figures count only units registered with it as resale apartments, so a sale that never passes through the network does not appear in them.^[2]^[3] It publishes each month's figures around the 10th of the following month.^[4] The Real Estate Economic Institute counts newly built units released for sale in the month, at the prices the developers set; these are not sold prices. Its monthly reports appear in the middle or second half of the following month.^[5]

These numbers are not interchangeable, and the gap between them is not fixed. In July 2026, new-build units released in the 23 wards averaged about ¥3.64 million per square meter, about 2.7 times the ¥1.36 million average for resale apartments sold in the 23 wards that month. In August, the new-build average for the 23 wards was about ¥2.12 million, about 1.6 times the resale average of ¥1.33 million.^[6]^[7]^[8]^[1]^[9] Neither number is wrong: they describe different apartments, in different locations, priced in different ways. Dividing one by the other does not tell you how much more a new apartment costs than a comparable older one.

Asking prices and sold prices can move in different directions

REINS's monthly report does not give a single new-listing figure for the 23 wards, so this section uses its figures for Tokyo as a whole: the 23 wards plus the Tama area, the rest of Tokyo outside the wards excluding the islands.^[10]^[11] In August 2026, apartments newly listed for sale in Tokyo had an average asking price of about ¥1.64 million per square meter, 14.7% higher than in August 2025. Apartments reported sold that month averaged about ¥1.19 million per square meter, 0.8% lower than in August 2025. Compared with August 2025, the number of new listings was up 21.8% at 9,418, the number of sales was down 18.7% at 1,562, and the stock of apartments listed at the end of the month was up 21.3% at 28,082.^[10]

So, comparing August with August, the asking-price average rose while the sold-price average edged down. The two averages come from different groups of apartments, which is why their gap cannot be read as a discount. If you want to put a listing in context, its asking price per square meter is closer in kind to the new-listing average for the same area and month than to the sold average.^[12]

An average moves with the apartments that happened to sell

The REINS price per square meter is an average of the apartments whose sales were reported that month, not adjusted for differences between them.^[2] If a month's sales include more apartments that usually sell for less per square meter, such as older ones, the average can fall even if comparable apartments have not become cheaper.

The central three wards (Chiyoda, Chuo and Minato) show how much the average can move. May 2026 had the lowest monthly average for the area in the thirteen months to August 2026.^[13]

Central three wards	Avg. sold price per m²	Change from a year earlier	Avg. building age	Sales reported
May 2026	¥2.20 million	−8.5%	25.7 years	198
June 2026	¥2.23 million	−4.0%	21.8 years	223
July 2026	¥2.39 million	+0.9%	20.7 years	228
August 2026	¥2.47 million	+4.1%	22.9 years	154

The apartments sold in May were older on average than in the following months, and the average price was lower. The figures cannot show how much of the difference came from age: size, floor and location within the three wards also change from month to month, and in August both the age and the price were higher than in July.^[14] Treat a single month's move as possibly a change in the mix, not as proof that values changed.

An index adjusts for the mix, but tells you a change, not a price

MLIT's residential property price index is built differently. It uses transaction prices that the ministry collects through questionnaires to the parties of transactions identified from changes in the property register. A statistical method called the hedonic approach adjusts for differences such as location, age and size. The index covers transactions between private parties and uses the 2010 average as 100. Because it is based on registered changes of ownership, its condominium index mainly reflects resale units. Figures normally appear about three months after the month they describe and are revised during the following three months. The headline figures are seasonally adjusted, and unadjusted figures are published as well.^[15] MLIT notes that housing transactions tend to be active in February and March, at the end of Japan's fiscal year, and slower afterwards.^[16]

The latest figure for condominiums in Tokyo as a whole that was available on September 24, 2026 was a preliminary one for December 2025: 234.8 on the seasonally adjusted series, 0.8% higher than in November.^[17] At that level, quality-adjusted prices were about 2.3 times their 2010 average.^[18] The index does not give a price per square meter in yen, and it describes a past change, not a forecast.

The index was also running late. On August 27, 2026, MLIT announced that the release planned for the end of that month, covering May 2026, had been postponed because of a problem in the program used to calculate the index, and that the releases planned from April onward for January to April 2026 had also been postponed, with new dates still to be set.^[19] So as of September 24, 2026, the index could not yet be used to check how prices moved during 2026.

Average or median: when expensive units pull the average up

The Real Estate Economic Institute also publishes the median price of new-build units, the price in the middle when all units are lined up. It describes the median as less affected than the average by very large, very expensive units, or very small, cheap ones. In the first half of 2026, new-build units released in the 23 wards had an average price of about ¥142.5 million per unit and a median of about ¥121.5 million, a gap of about ¥21.0 million. In the first half of 2023, when very expensive units were released in central Tokyo, the gap widened to about ¥45.7 million.^[20] These are prices per unit, not per square meter. When the average sits well above the median, it is worth asking which expensive units were in the count before treating the average as typical.

Reading the Tokyo apartment price trend month by month

A single month says little on its own, whether the figure is up or down. The table shows every month in the REINS summary for resale apartments sold in the 23 wards, from August 2025 to August 2026.^[21]^[22]

Month	Avg. sold price per m²	Change from the month before	Change from a year earlier
Aug 2025	¥1.33 million	+0.7%	+18.9%
Sep 2025	¥1.32 million	−1.2%	+14.6%
Oct 2025	¥1.35 million	+2.7%	+17.3%
Nov 2025	¥1.31 million	−3.0%	+11.2%
Dec 2025	¥1.36 million	+3.6%	+15.1%
Jan 2026	¥1.38 million	+1.4%	+11.3%
Feb 2026	¥1.33 million	−3.0%	+12.9%
Mar 2026	¥1.36 million	+2.0%	+11.8%
Apr 2026	¥1.37 million	+1.0%	+10.1%
May 2026	¥1.31 million	−4.5%	+2.0%
Jun 2026	¥1.31 million	−0.1%	+1.5%
Jul 2026	¥1.36 million	+3.5%	+2.7%
Aug 2026	¥1.33 million	−2.3%	−0.3%

Three things stand out. The monthly average stayed between about ¥1.31 million and ¥1.38 million, and the change from the month before switched between a rise and a fall nine times across the thirteen months in the table. The change from a year earlier fell from double digits to low single digits in May 2026; REINS noted that August was the first year-on-year fall in 76 months, since April 2020.^[22] And a year-on-year figure compares one month with the same month a year earlier, so it also depends on how high or low that earlier month was. The same caution applies to the double-digit rises of 2025 as to the small fall in August 2026.

New-build averages moved even more over these two months, because they depend on which projects developers released. In July 2026, the average price per square meter for the 23 wards was 73.7% higher than a year earlier, and across the four-prefecture Tokyo area (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba) the institute reported records for both the average price per unit and the average per square meter, about ¥2.37 million, up 50.8%. It linked the record average price to large projects in the 23 wards going on sale.^[6] In August, 1,140 units were released across the same area at about ¥1.44 million per square meter, 9.1% lower than a year earlier.^[8] These are averages of different sets of units released in different months; they do not measure a change in the value of the same apartments.

Check how many sales are behind a figure

In August 2026, 154 sales of resale apartments were reported in the central three wards, 38.9% fewer than a year earlier and the fewest in the thirteen months shown; monthly sales there ranged from 154 to 298.^[14]^[13] August's +4.1% for the area therefore rests on the smallest number of sales in that period. With so few sales, a change in the share of high- or low-priced apartments can move the average noticeably. MLIT takes similar care with its own index, marking values based on small samples as reference figures.^[23]

Counts need care too. REINS notes that a change to its system from January 2025, made to improve the reporting of sales, may have affected the number of sales counted. The 59.3% year-on-year rise in sales in the 23 wards in August 2025 compares a month after the change with one before it; the 20.6% fall in August 2026 compares two months after it. REINS does not say how large the effect was.^[24]

Match the area and the month before you compare

Area. "Tokyo" can mean the 23 wards, the whole of Tokyo including the Tama area, or the four-prefecture Tokyo area that both REINS and the Real Estate Economic Institute use for their headline figures. In August 2026, for example, the REINS average sold price was about ¥0.82 million per square meter for the four-prefecture area, against about ¥1.33 million for the 23 wards.^[11]
Month. On September 24, 2026, the latest REINS and new-build figures were for August 2026, but the latest MLIT index was for December 2025.^[4]^[5]^[19] Putting the "latest" figure from each side by side compares different months.
Revisions. MLIT's first figures are preliminary and are revised for three months.^[15] Note the publication date of any figure you save.

When these statistics are not enough

The postponed MLIT figures come out. A quality-adjusted index for 2026 could show a different pattern from the REINS averages, because the two are built differently. Look at it when it appears rather than relying on one series.
You are pricing one particular home. No average or index sets the price of a specific apartment. For condominiums, the MLIT index treats floor area, the floor the unit is on, distance from the nearest station, age, whether the unit has been renovated and whether it faces south, among other things, as features that affect price, and these differ from one apartment to the next.^[25]
You think in another currency. Every series here is in yen. None of them shows how prices moved for a buyer whose money is in another currency.

Five questions to ask about any Tokyo price figure

Is it a sold price, an asking price or a new-build price?
Which area does it cover: the 23 wards, the whole of Tokyo, or the four-prefecture area?
Which month does it describe, and when was it published?
Is it an average, a median or an index?
How many sales or units are behind it, and is the change from the month before or from a year earlier?

If whoever quotes a figure cannot answer these, ask for the source. Prices on our listings page are what sellers are asking, so the second row of the table at the top is the closest comparison, not the first. Our Tokyo guide covers the rest of what you may want to know about the city.