Japan Property Practicalities
Buying property in Japan: the parts that are
hard to get right.
There is no shortage of English articles explaining that you can buy property in Japan as a foreigner. There is very little that helps you with the next step: the numbers, the documents, and the questions to ask before you sign. That is what this section is for.
Written by SHINWA CREATIVE, K.K., a welding and metalwork company in Miyagi Prefecture. We are not estate agents and we sell nothing on these pages. Every rate is checked against a Japanese primary source, and the date of that check is on every page.
Guides and tools
Guide
Zoning laws: 13 use zones, coverage and floor area ratio
Three entries on a Japanese land listing decide what kind of building a site can carry and how large it can be. This guide sets out the 13 use zones, how the permitted and prohibited lists are drafted, the figures a city plan chooses from, the road-width limit that can pull the floor area ratio below the listed figure, and where the designation is officially recorded.
Guide
Minpaku law: notification, permit or special zone
Short-term lodging in a Japanese home runs under one of three regimes. This guide sets out the 180-day count, the test that decides whether a home bought only for lodging is a 'residence', what the statutes say about foreign operators, the management-company rule, and how bylaws, ordinances and zoning can stop a plan, with what could not be confirmed stated plainly.
Guide
Agent commission: the legal fee cap for sales and rentals
Japan's brokerage commission is a ceiling, not a price. This guide sets out the banded cap for a sale, the combined one-month cap for a rental, the July 2024 rules for low-priced and long-term vacant properties, what cannot be billed on top, how consumption tax enters the figures, and when the model terms let the fee be claimed.
Guide
Can foreigners buy land? The filings that apply instead of a ban
Japan's 1925 Alien Land Act is still on the books, but the government told the Diet in 2013 that no order under it was in force. What reaches a buyer instead are filings tied to the land itself: advance notice in special watch zones, the two-week report for large plots, the forest-owner notice, the farmland permit, and nationality items that were added to several of these forms between 2023 and 2026.
Guide
Hazard maps: three official tools that do different jobs
Japan's national overlay, each municipality's water hazard map and the Real Estate Information Library can show related information without being interchangeable. This guide separates river flooding, surface-water flooding, storm surge, sediment-disaster and tsunami zones; explains what the statutory pre-contract disclosure identifies; and shows why a blank area is not proof of zero risk.
Guide
Earthquake insurance: the fire-policy gap and four payout classes
Ordinary fire insurance does not cover fire caused by an earthquake. Japan's separate earthquake system must be attached to fire insurance, limits the insured amount to 30–50%, and pays standardized percentages for four loss classes. This guide separates building and household-goods thresholds, the 72-hour event rule, the ¥12 trillion aggregate limit, and the public-private reinsurance layers revised on 2 April 2026.
Guide
Buying a condo: management fees, repair reserves and the 2026 framework
A condominium purchase makes the owner part of the body that manages the whole building. This guide separates the monthly management fee from the repair reserve, shows which figures and records enter the statutory pre-contract explanation, explains why the Ministry's reserve ranges are reference points rather than legal minimums, and sets out the domestic-manager role available to an owner outside Japan since 1 April 2026.
Guide
Home renovation: confirmation and asbestos are separate systems
Since 1 April 2025, a building with two or more stories or more than 200 square meters can enter the building-confirmation process when the work is a major repair or major remodeling. That test turns on more than half of one kind of principal building part, not half the budget or the rooms. Separately, an asbestos survey can be required before work regardless of project size: the one-million-yen and 80-square-meter figures govern reporting, not the survey itself.
Guide
Rent guarantors: an individual, or a guarantee business
English uses one word for two arrangements the Civil Code treats differently. The article that requires a maximum figure, and gives the contract no effect without it, is confined by its own definition to a guarantor who is not a corporation — a line that does not fall where the word “business” falls, since the same statutes contemplate a guarantee business carried on by a natural person. Also: the writing requirement in Article 446(2), the single sentence of Article 454 that removes the defence of demand and the defence of recourse, the right of reimbursement that moves the debt to the guarantee business after it pays, the disclosure article that reaches business debt only, a register the Ministry itself calls voluntary, the Act on rental housing management in which the word guarantee appears not once, and the chapter in force since 1 October 2025 whose criteria include not asking an applicant for the contact details of relatives or friends.
Guide
Earthquake standards, and the 1981 line
Three provisions in force today name 1981, and all three turn on something narrower than a year: the day work on the building began. What they mark is a building whose safety is unknown rather than one found unsafe. Also: the confirmation certificate issued before work starts and the completion certificate issued after, the provision that leaves an existing building outside a rule made later and the five cases that end that protection, the six documents whose state of keeping an agent explains for an existing home, and the three ministerial notifications of 2000 for timber houses, one of which was abolished on 1 April 2025.
Guide
Leasehold land: two rights that behave differently on a sale
Article 2 of the Act on Land and Building Leases defines a leasehold as either of two rights, and the Civil Code article that requires the landowner’s consent to a sale reaches only one of them. Also: the thirty years the Act fixes and the ten and twenty a renewal adds, the four characters in Article 5 that make a renewal turn on whether a building is still standing, the two months of silence that count as consent to a rebuild, the registration of the building rather than of the land that binds a buyer of the ground, the two years a notice board holds that protection open, the court permission that can stand in for a refusing landowner and the two months an auction purchaser has to ask for it, the three fixed-term forms and the notarial deed two of them require, and the term of superficies beyond which the land tax is charged to the holder instead of the owner.
Guide
A mortgage in Japan: what is attached to the property
Whether a lender advances money is that lender’s decision and no statute settles it. What the statutes settle is everything the loan does to the property: the charge the Civil Code creates without possession moving, the article that lets the security reach only the last two years of interest, the four thousandths of the borrowing that the registration costs and the conditions for the tenth of that, the line the register carries when the claim is in a foreign currency, the deemed superficies when an auction separates a building from its land, the six months an occupier is not required to hand over, and the entry that stays after the debt is paid. Also: the twenty-day report a non-resident owes the Minister of Finance through the Bank of Japan, and the exemption that turns on who is going to live in the property.
Guide
Buying an akiya: what the statutes require
A recommendation from the mayor — not an order, and not the earlier guidance — is what strips a vacant house of the residential-land tax reduction, and since 13 December 2023 it can come at a stage that did not exist before. Also: why two metres of frontage onto a four-metre road decides whether a plot may be built on again, the 2023 route that reaches a 1.8-metre lane, the permission an agricultural committee must give before a field changes hands and what happens to a sale made without it, the notification both parties owe before contracting near certain facilities, and why land with a house still standing on it cannot be handed to the State.
Guide
Shikikin, reikin and move-out charges
The article that defines a rental deposit is absent from the Civil Code in force on 1 April 2019 and present on 1 April 2020, and it defines the deposit by what it secures rather than by the name on the invoice. Also: the two events that make the balance returnable, the two things Article 621 takes out of a restoration charge, the paragraph numbers in the fixed-term lease article that moved in 2022, and the 0.55 months' rent ceiling the fee notice puts on what an agency may take from one party to a residential lease unless that party consented when the engagement was accepted.
Guide
Japan's property register: what it proves, and two deadlines
Anyone may order a certificate on any property in Japan, for ¥600, without giving a reason. What that certificate establishes is narrower than the phrase “title deed” suggests. Also: the credential that replaced the paper deed and the three routes when it cannot be produced, the contact entry for owners with no Japanese address, and the two-year filing duty that started on 1 April 2026 and reaches back to changes made before it.
Guide
Tax on rent from Japanese property
Where the owner lives abroad, the tenant may be required to hold back 20.42% — of the rent itself, in a loss-making year as much as a profitable one — and the exception that switches this off carries no price ceiling, unlike the one on a sale. Also: the ministerial table that sets the depreciation, and the part of a loss that cannot leave the rental.
Guide
Capital gains tax on Japanese property
The line between the 20.315% rate and the 39.63% one is five years, but the statute measures them at 1 January — so a flat sold in its fifth summer can be tested as if it were held four. Also: the 10.21% a buyer is required to hold back from the price when the seller is a non-resident, and the two conditions that switch that off.
Calculator
Japan property tax calculator
Enter a price and see the annual fixed asset and city planning tax, plus the one-off costs of buying: the broker's commission cap, stamp duty, registration tax and acquisition tax, each built from the published statutory rate. It tells you which lines it cannot compute without a document you do not have yet.
Calculator
Japan gift tax calculator
Gift tax here is charged on the person receiving, and on the calendar year rather than the gift. Enter a year's total and see the statutory bands summed one at a time — including the blend that applies, and that printed rate tables cannot show, when money arrived from a parent and from someone else in the same year.
Guide
Japan's gift tax for foreigners
The ¥1.1 million allowance is not in the article that sets it, and the definition deciding whether money from home is taxed is not in the gift tax article at all — it reaches across from the one before by a bracket. Also: why money from your parents for rent and school is outside the tax base, and the election that cannot be withdrawn.
Guide
Japan's inheritance tax for foreigners
Whether Japan reaches assets abroad turns on which appended table of the Immigration Act a status of residence sits in — and permanent residence moves you into the net, not out of it. Also: the two ten-year tests that are not the same test, two reliefs switched off by different lists, and the deadline that ends the day you leave the country.
Guide
Japan's mortgage tax deduction for foreigners
The statute grants it to an individual, not to a resident — and it was rebuilt in April 2026, moving the deadline to 2030 and opening a new route for small pre-owned flats. Also: the energy rule that takes a new build's deduction to zero rather than reducing it, and the published Flat 35 conditions, including the one it does not insist on.
Guide
Property tax in Japan for foreigners
Nationality does not change the tax. The assessed value does — and it is not the price you paid. How to find the real number before you sign, what the 1 January rule means for your closing statement, and what you must file if you live abroad.
More is being added slowly. We would rather publish two things a week that are right than twenty that are recycled.