Chiyoda / Marunouchi

Chiyoda-ku is the smallest of the central wards by residential stock, and that scarcity is the whole thesis. Marunouchi and Otemachi are office and rail, not condo neighbourhoods; the units that do trade are clustered in Kojimachi, Bancho, Kanda, and the Akihabara fringe. When a Bancho 2LDK prints, it is often a one-off in that quarter. Do not annualise a single sale into a “Marunouchi condo market.”

Buyers here are domestic institutions, company housing programs, and UHNW households who want an Imperial Palace-side address. Foreign private buyers appear, but the bid is usually in yen and the due-diligence cycle is slower than in Minato because inventory is thin. Gross yields on the scarce residential stock are typically at or below 3%. You are paying for irreplaceability and a hedge against Tokyo office-core prestige, not for cash flow.

Kanda and Akihabara are the release valve. Smaller, older RC and SRC buildings there trade more often and at a discount to Bancho. They also carry more earthquake-old-stock and mixed-use (office over retail) complexity. If the median on this page looks “reasonable” versus Ginza, check whether the latest quarter was a Kanda print or a Bancho print.

There is almost no tourism-rental angle that survives Chiyoda’s lodging rules and mansion bylaws in the prestige blocks. Underwrite a long residential or corporate lease. The useful comparison set is Ginza / Nihonbashi (also thin, also prestige) and Minato-ku’s inner embassy streets — not Shinjuku volume.