That is a very big difference between house-buying patterns in east Asia in general and house-buying patterns in the United States, and has been for a long time. But that didn't help Japan avoid a housing bust, because if builders build on speculation, their debt drags down the economy even if house-buyers don't have comparable levels of debt. Speculative bubbles always leave someone holding debts that they can't pay off when the bubbles burst.
But do Japanese builders build using large loans, surely the historical sense of building houses from your own money would extend to make them fear borrowing more than they can afford to lose.
