A sprawling housing complex in a desirable area of downtown Tokyo started welcoming new residents on Jan. 19.

Converted from the Athletes’ Village for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, the Harumi Flag residential complex is located in Chuo Ward.

And like the Summer Games, held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shifting of the Athletes’ Village to the Harumi Flag complex has not been without controversy.

A company president, 35, moved into the Harumi Flag with his wife and 5-year-old son.

“I saw photos of the Athletes’ Village posted by athletes on Instagram when the Olympics was on, and I said to my wife, ‘This place looks good,’” he recalled.

The family lived in Chiba Prefecture before relocating to a different apartment complex in the same Harumi district in 2019.

He decided to move to Harumi Flag because of the price.

The new place is 20 percent larger than his previous location, but both units cost the same.

“Although it’s close to central Tokyo, the sidewalk is large enough for two strollers to pass by each other,” he said. “The park has larger playground equipment, and the lawn area is vast.”

Located at the innermost point of Tokyo Bay, the 134,000-square-meter area was originally owned by the Tokyo metropolitan government.

The land was sold to major real estate companies to set up the Athletes’ Village. They erected 21 buildings, each between 14 and 18 stories, to accommodate about 18,000 athletes and other personnel.

With two 50-story condominium buildings also under construction, a total of 5,632 residential units will be put up for sale and rental in the area in 2025.

Harumi Flag will house 12,000 residents in total next year.

When pre-sales started in 2019, buyers flocked to buy the luxury apartments.

The odds of winning an apartment in the lottery were 1 in 266 at the maximum. The metropolitan government asked the sellers to take measures to prevent resales.

Prices in the complex are affordable despite being only about 2 kilometers from the posh Ginza district. Elsewhere in the capital, prices are soaring.

The average price of a new 74-square-meter apartment in Chuo Ward in the period from January to May 2023 was 132.27 million yen ($893,000), according to Lifull Home’s, a real estate and housing information service.

The starting price for a Harumi Flag apartment with a floor space of about 50 square meters is between 40 million yen and 50 million yen.

“The average price per square meter is about 30 percent cheaper than other places in Chuo Ward,” said Toshiaki Nakayama, vice president of Lifull Home’s Soken research institute, which analyzes the housing environment.

The lower prices stem from pre-Olympic plans.

The metropolitan government sold the land to the real estate companies at relatively cheaper prices on condition that the Athletes’ Village would be converted into the apartment complex.

Families with small children and double-income households with no kids will make up a majority of residents, Nakayama said.

The Chuo Ward office in April will open an elementary school and a junior high school in the Harumi district.

To attract young residents, an educational corporation that operates private integrated junior and senior high schools is preparing to open a child care center. A leading cram school operator for junior high school entrance exams has also opened a branch in the Harumi district.

However, the ward office expects the number of elementary school pupils in the district to increase nearly fourfold to 1,286 in seven years.

The ward plans to build a second school building about 400 meters from the original school to separate students by academic year.

A bus rapid transit system connects Harumi Flag with other parts of central Tokyo. But some residents in the complex must travel about 1.5 kilometers to reach the nearest subway station.

The metropolitan government has announced plans to construct a new subway line that will run through the area. It is expected to be completed in the 2040s.

With the Tokyo Games postponed by one year due to the pandemic, developers had to delay the handover of the properties, which was initially scheduled for March 2023.

Some buyers sued the real estate companies, demanding compensation for the delay.

The Tokyo District Court rejected the suit, but a high court last summer sent the case back to the district court. The case is ongoing.

A group of Tokyo residents also filed a damages lawsuit against the metropolitan government and other related parties in 2017. The plaintiffs claimed the publicly owned properties were sold to the real estate companies at unfairly cheap prices to build the Athletes’ Village.

The district court dismissed the case, saying the transactions were not inappropriate.

(This story was written by Soichi Tsuchidate and Takahiro Takizawa.)