Rent in Tokyo for a 2BR apartment: $1,903/mo
Rent in NYC for a 2BR apartment: $2,909/mo
Rent in San Francisco for a 2BR apartment: $3,631/mo
Src: Deutsche Bank https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD000000000049...
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/world-most-expensive-citi...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2022/06/29/these-...
The average difference in cost between buying in Chicago versus buying in the suburbs of Chicago is the price of two median cars (~$60K difference total). Over a 30 year mortgage, in the suburbs, you'd probably buy 2-3 cars per adult. If living in the city let's you go to down to 0.5 cars per adult or even 0 cars per adult, then you've broke even or saved money. Heck, even just having a reasonably priced car in the city, driving less, and having leisure use insurance on your vehicle because you don't commute via car can result in thousands per year in savings even after you pay for parking.
NOTE: I wouldn't trust most sources of this kind of data you see online (I can't open your link so I can't verify it) because you simply cannot compare rent prices like that "across cultures".
And I don't mean just "Japanese apartments are small" (this is mostly a myth, although they are smaller on average), I simply mean that it's pretty much impossible to define what "city center" is in Tokyo, and having a good public transportation system and multiple city centers (Tokyo is 23 cities, and more) means that it's kinda hard to find a uniform measure that is comparable to most other cities in the world.
Tokyo is incredibly cheap for such a massive world capital/megalopolis. I can't stress this enough, as someone who's moved to Tokyo from one of the most expensive (yet incredibly small) capitals of Europe as far as rent goes (Dublin). It was amazing to see the contrast.
$1900/mo in Tokyo for 2 bedroom apartment (I assume it'd be a so-called 2LDK) is actually quite overpriced if you know which neighborhoods to look at (and yes, you can still consider them "city center"). I live 20 minutes away from Shinjuku, 30 minutes away from Shibuya, 10 minutes away from Ikebukuro (all three massive city centers) and I pay the equivalent of $1300/mo for a 3LDK apartment (3 bedroom, one living/dining room, one kitchen).
Obviously, if you want to be fancy and live in cool or pricy neighborhoods like Ebisu or Daikanyama or most of Setagaya-ku you're gonna pay much more, still... Definitely waaaay less than other places like San Francisco or New York.
Same. But this is published by a large global financial institution, not a crowd-sourced low-quality web site.
Also, as I said, Tokyo really isn't one city, it's a huge gigantic collection of multiple cities with an incredible public transport system that really doesn't make you feel like you're not living in a "city center" even if you aren't in one. I can step out of my house and be in a "downtown" area in less than 10 minutes by just taking one train and there is one train every 2-3 minutes.
If anything, I found https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/ usually has a much more nuanced breakdown of actual living expenses across cities, although their rent metrics also are quite incorrect because the way rent and housing space is measured in Japan doesn't quite fit a western standard unit of measure.
