Japan Housing Starts Drop the Least in 3 Months

2025-07-31 05:16 By Farida Husna 1 min. read

Japan’s housing starts fell 15.6% year-on-year in June 2025, slightly better than market expectations of a 15.8% drop and easing from May’s sharp 34.4% plunge—the steepest since September 2009.

This marked the third consecutive monthly decline but the mildest in the sequence, as contractions slowed across key categories: owned (-16.4% vs -30.9%), rented (-14.0% vs -30.5%), built-for-sale (-17.9% vs -43.8%), and two-by-four homes (-5.7% vs -26.4%).

On the other hand, prefabricated housing starts declined slightly more (-9.6% vs -9.3%), while growth in issued units moderated sharply to 10.2% from 76.7% in May.



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