Buying a Home via Social Media: The Curator Economy Reshaping Japan Used Condo Sales
- More buyers find used condos on social media and book viewings via LINE
- Trust is built by curator-type accounts, not conventional influencers
- Social logic is prying open a famously opaque industry
Find a listing on social media, book a viewing on LINE, then sign the largest purchase of your life—ITmedia tracks how this pattern is spreading through Japan's used condominium market. The key figures are 'curators': accounts that earn trust through daily posts on selection logic, red-flag checklists, and viewing diaries, then convert that trust into transactions. The industrial significance lies in information structure. Real-estate brokerage is one of the most information-asymmetric businesses—dual agency, listing hoarding, bait advertising—and the curator economy grows a parallel channel where trust is the currency. With Tokyo used condos averaging 127 million yen, the commission per deal makes that channel ever more lucrative. The same curator phenomenon exists in Chinese-language communities for Japan property; the filter is unchanged—ask how they get paid.