specific to varied user needs. Recent years have witnessed growing entry into the aircraft- and ship-based segments of international shipment to reflect the cargo owners’ needs for globalization.

Further, as internal trade takes on an increasingly important tone, global shipment gets more streamlined than before, urging safety assurance during transportation. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism works to ensure the availability of safe and secure logistics services, as by conducting audits, etc. to consolidate thorough operator code compliance.

## 6 Trends in the Warehousing Business and Measures

Commercial warehouses play a vital role as nodes of physical distribution. After the requirements for entry into the warehousing business were eased to a registration system, the number of newcomers has steadily increased, with the number of warehouse operators reaching 6,059 as of the end of FY2012 (up 1,004 over the end of FY2001).

In recent years, the construction of large, intelligent physical distribution facilities by foreign or domestic real estate entities or funds has been activated, giving birth to warehouse operators who rent such facilities to develop their businesses. To fulfill sophisticated and diversified needs for physical distribution, warehouse operators tend to combine other multiple physical distribution businesses, such as a consigned freight forwarding business.

The introduction of equipment that makes for a lower-carbon implementation of logistics facilities is underway, as well as the introduction of emergency power supplies and telecommunications equipment that help build a disaster-tolerant truck warehouse.

## Trends in the Truck Terminal Business and Measures

The truck terminal business plays a significant role in streamlining the flow of transport, mitigating congestion and so on as a nodal point of trucking between a trunk line and a terminal. In recent years, the construction of facilities that provide the functionality of a distribution center (sorting, processing for distribution and so on), as well as loading and unloading, is in progress to meet the sophisticated and diversified needs for logistics.

The introduction of equipment that makes for a lower-carbon implementation of physical distribution facilities is underway, as well as the introduction of emergency power supplies and telecommunications equipment that help build a disaster-tolerant truck terminal.

## 8 Trends in the Real Estate Business and Measures

(1) Conditions surrounding the real estate business

The real estate business is one of the key industries that command 2.4% of the total sales of all industries and 11.1% of the total number of corporations (FY2012).

Land prices had followed a declining trend nationwide until 2013, when they started to turn upward in urban areas, particular, in the three major metropolitan areas, with signs of recovery being noticeable in the rural areas as well. The number of new housing starts, after plumbing to 780,000 in FY2009, soared to top 890,000 in FY2012 and still could to top 950,000 in FY2013 at the presence rate of growth.

In the existing housing circulation market, the number of successful deals has followed a steady trend with 151,000 in FY2012 according to the Real Estate Information Network System (REINS) $ ^{Note} $ .

Since December 2011, a voluntary “system of rental housing management entity registration” that places a certain set of rules on the fulfillment of rental housing management services has been put into effect since December 2011 to foster and develop a good-quality rental housing business. As of the end of March 2013, 2,767 rental housing management entities were registered.