Station-Level Methodology: Distance-Decay, Age-Drag & Yield Bands

By Tokyo Insights · Updated October 2025

Every station is a micro-market. Our methodology quantifies how distance, age, and layout interact to shape prices, rents and yields — producing apples-to-apples comparisons across Tokyo.

1) The Station as a Market Unit

Tokyo’s rail-oriented form creates natural market cells around stations. Line connectivity, amenity density and walkability shape achievable rent and price-per-㎡. We therefore treat stations as investable units rather than broad wards.

2) Distance-Decay

We model price per ㎡ as a function of walking minutes:

β is estimated per station/line/ward. This enables fair comparisons between assets at different walk times and helps identify fair-value discounts or premiums.

3) Age-Drag

Depreciation is steeper in the first 20–25 years, then flattens as maintenance cycles stabilize and residual land value dominates. We fit piecewise or spline-based curves, controlling for distance and layout.

4) Yield Bands

We classify stations into yield bands using Reinfolib sold-price comps and rental comps, normalized by distance and age:

• Core: 3.2–3.8%
• Inner Suburb: 4.0–4.8%
• Outer Suburb: 5.0–6.0%

Layout matters: 1K trades liquidity for headline yield; 1LDK balances demand depth and rent resilience; 2LDK provides move‑up optionality.

5) Data Inputs

• Reinfolib (MLIT): sold prices (成約), size, vintage, nearest station.
• Public Listings (Suumo/Home’s): layout distributions and asking-price dynamics.
• RESAS / Census: demographics and household formation.

6) Cleaning & Modeling

1. Remove outliers (winsorize tails by station and vintage).
2. Normalize by distance and age; bucket vintage (0–10, 10–20, 20–30, 30+).
3. Estimate β (distance) and δ (age) per station/line group.
4. Assign yield bands; back-test against subsequent quarters.