Housing starts fall 35% on Aneha-inspired building reforms

Housing starts tumbled 35.0 percent year on year in October to 76,920 units, a decline for the fourth consecutive month, as tougher building regulations continued to cause procedural delays in construction activity, according to government data released Friday.

The sharp drop has already dampened growth in the nation's gross domestic product in the July-September quarter and has raised public concern about the health of the economy down the road.

Owner-occupied housing starts declined 8.0 percent to 27,724 units, a fall for the ninth month in a row, according to data by the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry.

The figure for rental housing plummeted 40.2 percent to 31,706 units and that for homes for sale by housing developers plunged 50.2 percent to 17,037 units. Both dropped for the fourth straight month.

All of the nation's four major geographic areas registered double-digit declines. The hardest hit was the greater Osaka region, where housing starts dived 48.4 percent, followed by the area in and around Tokyo, which saw a drop of 42.7 percent.

The government stiffened the law on building standards in June following a public outcry after a spate of scandals involving the fabrication of earthquake resistance data by officially certified architects, mainly Hidetsugu Aneha.

The law requires local governments and other entities to check and certify the accuracy of structural strength data submitted by builders prior to construction.