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Ikea store in Tokyo: Mixes in with the tiny house trend.
Photo: Stanislav Kogiku / imago images / ZUMA Wire
Ikea becomes a landlord: the Swedish furniture manufacturer will soon be offering a tiny apartment in Tokyo - for less than one euro a month.
On the Twitter platform, the company shared a floor plan of the ten square meter apartment, which is fully equipped with Ikea furniture.
To save space, the apartment is laid out on two levels.
Downstairs there is an entrance, a kitchenette, a bathroom, a washing machine and a small desk.
A ladder leads to the second level, there is the bed.
77 cents a month
In total, the apartment will cost 99 Japanese yen, the equivalent of 77 cents a month.
The tenant should pay additional costs.
The apartment is located in Shinjuki, one of the city's major commercial districts.
Applicants must be at least 20 years old and be a member of Ikea's »Family Club«.
The apartment is to be rented until at least 2023. Ikea has not yet announced how many applicants there have been.
Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world.
About 14 million people live in the Japanese capital.
In contrast to other metropolises in the world, housing costs there are rising significantly less or even staying the same.
Almost a million new apartments and houses are built there every year.
Tokyo is therefore an example of a successful housing policy.
Because of the limited space, there are often particularly small apartments, so-called "tiny apartments", which are mainly used by young people in their 20s and 30s.
Not a first time landlord
The trend has also arrived in Germany.
"Tiny Houses" are less than 40 square meters in size and are particularly cheap and environmentally friendly.
It is not the first time that the Swedish furniture company has become a landlord: In 2019, Ikea cooperated with a Swedish construction company to offer special apartments for people with dementia.
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