Working in Japan: Why Buying a House Is Actually Easier Than Renting

Hey guys! We started a podcast. Had our good friend Austin on for Episode 4 — experienced trip planner and backcountry guide, and he’s running some awesome trips in the Hokkaido backcountry this winter. We got into how he plans a day out there, plus a pretty funny story about a wild day me and Grant had in the backcountry. Episode four of YukiHomes Presents.

It might surprise you… but renting in Japan is significantly harder than buying a house.

And that would be a massive problem if Japanese home prices weren’t so absurdly affordable. (Which they are, but more on that in a minute.)

If you’re a remote worker eyeing Japan as your next move, and you’ve got a viable pathway to a long-term visa, here’s my honest, slightly contrarian take: you should probably skip the rental search entirely and just buy a place.

Yeah, I know how that sounds. In most countries, renting is the “easy” option and buying requires a ton of money. But that is not the case for Japan. Let me explain why.

Once you step back and think about it, it actually makes sense why renting is so brutal for foreigners.

If you’re renting from a Japanese landlord, you’re going to interact with them (or their property manager) a lot. Lease renewals every two years, key money, gift money, guarantor companies, neighborhood rules about trash sorting and noise… the relationship is very involved and you don’t speak their language.

Now layer on the landlord’s perspective. There’s a real risk that one day a foreign tenant wakes up, books a one-way flight home, and leaves them in the dust. In a country where tenant protections are some of the strongest in the developed world, the deck is already stacked against the landlord. Once a tenant is in, evicting them, even for legitimate reasons, can take years.

So when a landlord hears “foreign applicant, no Japanese language skills, no Japanese guarantor”… they just take the safe option and decline.

This isn’t anecdotal evidence. A 2016 Japanese Ministry of Justice survey found that 40% of foreign respondents had been rejected for rental housing because they were not Japanese. According to the Ichii Group, a major Tokyo real estate agency, almost 9 out of 10 private housing units in Tokyo do not allow foreign tenants at all.

Roughly 90% of rentals in Tokyo are off the table before you even apply.

So when I tell people they should expect a 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 “yes” rate when apartment hunting in Japan as a foreigner… It is not an exaggeration at all.

Housing discrimination against foreigners is legal under Japanese law. Landlords can openly advertise “No Foreigners” and there’s nothing you can do about it.