How Renting Works in Japan
How renting works in Japan follows a small set of recurring structures: agency-mediated listings, a renewable two-year lease, a large upfront cost stack, and, for most tenants today, a guarantor company standing in for a personal one.123 Missing a piece of this structure, like the guarantor company step or the regional renewal-fee convention, is what turns a routine search into a stressful one.
Procedures, fees, and requirements can change. Confirm current details at Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT).
Overview
This guide walks through the market as most first-time tenants encounter it: standard private-sector rental housing under an ordinary lease contract (chintai shakuya keiyaku), as distinct from UR public housing, corporate-leased apartments, or share houses.3 It applies equally to Japanese-national and foreign renters at the pre-search or early-search stage; almost nothing here is scoped by nationality in a legal sense.
The one exception is the foreigner-rejection pattern covered further down. It is a real, documented pattern in the market, but not a status-of-residence rule set by any statute.45
The Agent-Mediated Default: Why (Almost) No One Rents Direct
Almost every rental transaction in Japan runs through a licensed real estate agency (fudōsan-ya or chūkai gyōsha), not a direct deal between landlord and tenant.16 The agency lists the property, coordinates screening, and prepares the contract paperwork, standing in the middle of the process from search to signing.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 不動産会社 / 仲介業者 (fudōsan-ya / chūkai gyōsha) | Real estate agency or brokerage that mediates the rental transaction1 |
| 大家 (ōya) | Landlord6 |
| 仲介手数料 (chūkai tesūryō) | Brokerage or agency fee paid for mediating the contract7 |
Major portal sites such as SUUMO, LIFULL HOME'S, and at home are advertising channels agencies use to list properties, not marketplaces landlords post to directly.8 The same unit is often listed by several agencies at once, which is why an identical room can appear with different photos or slightly different prices depending on which site posted it.
The relationship among landlord, agency, and portal looks like this:
Why Direct Landlord-to-Tenant Rentals Are Rare
Landlords who skip agency mediation take on tenant screening, contract drafting, rent collection, and dispute handling themselves.1 That workload, especially chasing unpaid rent or re-marketing an empty unit, is the main reason most individual landlords delegate to an agency or management company instead.
From a tenant's side, a landlord willing to contract directly is hard to find simply because so few offer it. A tenant who does find one also loses the agency's role as an information intermediary, including condition disclosures and a market-rate comparison.1
The Standard Lease: A Renewable Two-Year Contract
The default residential lease in Japan is a futsū shakuya keiyaku (普通借家契約, "ordinary building lease") under the Act on Land and Building Leases (借地借家法).39 By statute, a fixed term of less than one year is treated as a lease with no fixed term at all.3
Two years is the customary lease length in practice, long enough to work for both sides without over-committing either (as of 2026-07; confirm current figures with a local real estate agency).10 That length is a market convention, not a term set anywhere in the statute itself. The clauses inside a lease worth reading closely before signing sit outside this overview's scope.
A renewable lease works on a repeating cycle rather than a hard expiry:
The Fixed-Term Exception
A minority of leases use a different structure: the teiki shakuya keiyaku (定期借家契約, "fixed-term building lease") under Article 38 of the same Act, which ends automatically at term expiry with no right to renew.311
This structure only holds up if the landlord delivers a separate written notice, apart from the lease document itself, explaining before signing that the lease will not renew and will end on expiry. Skipping that step invalidates the no-renewal term, and the lease reverts to an ordinary, renewable one.311
Fixed-term leases are rare, commonly cited at 6% or less of rental apartments across regions in industry survey data, though the source does not date the underlying survey.12 A first-time renter should expect to encounter an ordinary, renewable lease as the default. This overview does not go further into contract-clause specifics for either lease type.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 借地借家法 (Shakuchi Shakka Hō) | Act on Land and Building Leases, the statute governing both land and building or residential leases3 |
| 普通借家契約 (futsū shakuya keiyaku) | Ordinary, renewable building lease, the default9 |
| 定期借家契約 (teiki shakuya keiyaku) | Fixed-term building lease that ends without renewal11 |
The Upfront-Cost Shock: Four to Six Months Before You Get a Key
Move-in costs in Japan commonly add up to four to six months' rent once every line item is included, well beyond the one-month deposit common in many other rental markets (as of 2026-07; confirm current figures with a local real estate agency).13 A listing advertised with no deposit or key money still commonly lands around three to four months' rent; one with both still commonly lands around five to six months.
| Item | Amount | As of | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 敷金 (shikikin, security deposit) | 0–2 months' rent | 2026-07 | Refundable in principle, minus damage or arrears13 |
| 礼金 (reikin, key money) | 0–2 months' rent | 2026-07 | Non-refundable by convention13 |
| 前家賃 (zen-yachin, advance rent) | 1 month's rent | 2026-07 | First month's rent, paid at signing13 |
| 保証会社利用料 (guarantor-company fee) | 0.5–1 month's rent | 2026-07 | Paid to the guarantor company, not the landlord13 |
| 仲介手数料 (agency brokerage fee) | up to 1.1 months' rent including tax with tenant consent; otherwise 0.5 months plus tax per side | last notice amendment 2019-08-30 | Statutory cap under the Building Lots and Buildings Transaction Business Act7 |
| 火災保険料 (fire and renter's insurance) and 鍵交換代 (lock-cylinder replacement) | several tens of thousands of yen combined | 2026-07 | Often bundled into the agency's cost estimate13 |
Move-in costs are due as a lump sum at signing, not spread out over time. Having the full amount liquid before starting to tour units avoids a scramble once a unit worth applying for turns up.13
The full fee-by-fee negotiation playbook and a deeper cost comparison sit outside this overview's scope.
What's Refundable, What Isn't
Shikikin is refundable in principle. It is a damage-and-arrears deposit, and the landlord may deduct for damage beyond normal wear-and-tear or unpaid rent before returning the balance.14
A lease clause fixing a non-refundable portion of the deposit (敷引特約) is not automatically invalid under the Consumer Contract Act. The Supreme Court's 2011 ruling on such clauses held they are enforceable unless the withheld amount is disproportionate to the rent, the lease length, and ordinary wear-and-tear costs.14
Reikin, by contrast, is a non-refundable payment to the landlord by convention, with no equivalent function to a deposit. It is better understood as a lump-sum thank-you payment than as insurance against damage.13
The Guarantor Company: A Near-Mandatory Intermediary
A rent guarantor company (家賃債務保証業者 / hoshō gaisha) now stands behind the large majority of new leases, with an industry association survey placing usage at roughly 70% of contracts (as of 2016–2017 survey data; confirm current figures with your prospective guarantor company or property manager).152 That has displaced the individual personal guarantor as the default.
The guarantor company sits between tenant and landlord as a paid intermediary:
Passing a landlord's or agency's initial screening does not guarantee the guarantor company will approve the same application. Budget time for a second, separate screening step before a lease is final.2
MLIT runs a voluntary registration system for rent-guarantor businesses (家賃債務保証業者登録制度), created in October 2017, so landlords and tenants can identify vetted companies, including ones set up to serve non-Japanese tenants.16 The specific underwriting checks a given guarantor company runs are outside this overview's scope.
Why the Individual Guarantor Model Faded
Reporting on the shift points to several trends layering on top of each other: more single-person and elderly-only households, weaker extended-family networks willing to stand as a personal guarantor, more foreign-national renters without a Japan-resident relative to ask, and a 2020 Civil Code amendment (as of 2026-07).2
Since April 1, 2020, an individual acting as a rentai hoshōnin (連帯保証人, joint-and-several guarantor) for a residential lease must have a kyokudogaku (極度額, maximum liability cap) stated in the contract itself, or the guarantee is void.17 Leases already in force before that date stay valid without one until they are next renewed by mutual agreement. This is a fixed requirement of the amended Civil Code, not a schedule set by regulation.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 保証会社 / 家賃債務保証業者 (hoshō gaisha / yachin saimu hoshō gyōsha) | Rent-guarantor company, a business that guarantees a tenant's rent obligations for a fee216 |
| 連帯保証人 (rentai hoshōnin) | Joint-and-several individual guarantor17 |
| 極度額 (kyokudogaku) | The statutory maximum-liability cap an individual guarantor's contract must state17 |
Paying Rent: Cash by Default, Cashless on the Rise
For rent and management-fee payments specifically, bank auto-debit (口座振替) is the dominant method: one dated national survey put it at 51% of respondents, against 20% for cash and 15% for credit card (as of 2023-08 survey; confirm current figures with your property management company).18 That is a rent-specific breakdown, not an economy-wide cashless figure.
Economy-wide, Japan's overall cashless payment ratio across all consumer spending reached 58.0% in 2025 per Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (as of 2025 data, published 2026-03-31).19 That figure is background on the general trend the country is on, not a rent-specific number.
Credit-card rent payment is expanding through partnerships between management companies, guarantor companies, and payment processors. A national agency franchise struck a tie-up in December 2024 letting tenants pay rent and guarantor fees together by card, and a dedicated rent-focused card-payment service was being marketed to property-management companies as of early 2025 (as of 2024-12 / 2025-03).2021 No isolated year-over-year figure for cashless adoption in rent payments specifically was found beyond the single 2023 data point above, so this expansion is described here as a direction, not a measured trend line.
The Foreigner-Rejection Pattern: What the Market Actually Looks Like
In the Ministry of Justice's first nationwide survey of foreign residents, fielded in November and December 2016 across 37 municipalities with roughly 2,000 respondents who had searched for housing in the prior five years, a large share reported being refused rental housing because they were foreign, and a further share said they had given up a search after seeing a "no foreigners" notice on a listing (as of 2016–2017 survey; confirm current data with the Ministry of Justice).4522 The exact figures here rely on consistent secondary press reporting of the same government report rather than a direct read of the source document, since the primary file could not be parsed for this article; treat the general pattern as solid and the specific percentages reported elsewhere as approximate.
Surveys of rejected applicants list foreign nationality itself, alongside general screening concerns such as income stability and a guarantor's own eligibility, among the reasons landlords give for turning an application down. None of these are legal eligibility bars. They are landlord risk assessments.23
Practical workarounds for a renter who runs into this pattern, such as foreigner-friendly agencies or no-guarantor housing options, sit outside this overview's scope.
The Legal Backdrop: No Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Housing Law
Japan has no single statute that prohibits a private landlord from refusing to rent to a prospective tenant on the basis of nationality. The Constitution's equality guarantee (Article 14) is understood as directed at state action, not private contracting decisions, and Japan has ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination without enacting comprehensive implementing legislation that reaches private discrimination.24
The 2016 Act on the Promotion of Efforts to Eliminate Unfair Discriminatory Speech and Behavior Against Persons Originating from Outside Japan, commonly called the Hate Speech Act, directs national and local government toward awareness and consultation efforts. It carries no criminal or civil penalty, and it targets discriminatory speech, not housing refusal; it is adjacent context, not a housing law.25
A small number of municipalities have gone further. Kawasaki City's 2019 ordinance is the first in Japan to attach criminal penalties to hate speech, but its penal provisions are scoped to public hate-speech conduct such as loudspeaker use and demonstrations, not to a private landlord's housing-refusal decisions.26
The Housing Safety Net Act (住宅セーフティネット法) designates foreign nationals, alongside elderly, disabled, and low-income households, as jūtaku kakuho yō-hairyosha (住宅確保要配慮者, "persons requiring consideration in securing housing") by ministerial ordinance. It works through voluntary landlord registration of properties in exchange for subsidies and rent-guarantee support. It does not stop any landlord, registered or not, from declining a foreign applicant, and unregistered landlords keep full discretion.27
MLIT and the Ministry of Justice have answered the documented refusal pattern with guidance and awareness campaigns rather than legal prohibition. MLIT publishes a voluntary guideline for facilitating rental housing access for foreign nationals, including multilingual contract templates and checklists for landlords and agencies, and the Ministry of Justice's Human Rights Bureau names apartment-rental refusal as a human-rights concern under its public-enlightenment program rather than a matter it prosecutes or adjudicates.2829
Good to know
The Spring Rush Distorts Everything
The February to March window, driven by Japan's April fiscal and school-year start, is the sharpest demand spike of the year. New graduates, transferees, and students all move within the same six to eight week span, and landlords are commonly described as having the upper hand, with less room to negotiate away key money or free-rent concessions during this window than at other times of year.30
Moving-company costs, as distinct from rent itself, are commonly reported as rising roughly 1.5 to 2 times normal-season rates in this window. That compounds the timing squeeze on a renter's total moving budget even where rent itself does not visibly increase.30
A Renewal Fee Is Regional, Not Universal
The renewal fee (更新料, kōshinryō), charged when an ordinary lease is renewed at term end, is common practice in the Kanto region, meaning Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures, and far less common in the Kansai region, where most of Osaka and Hyogo customarily charge none at all. Kyoto is a documented exception within Kansai that does customarily charge one.
One government housing-market survey attributes the practice to roughly 58% of contracts in the Tokyo metropolitan area, against roughly 17 to 22% in the Chukyo (Nagoya) and Kinki (Kansai) metropolitan areas (as of FY2021/Reiwa 3 survey, published 2022-03; confirm current figures with MLIT's periodic housing market survey).31 These exact percentages could not be independently checked against the primary MLIT survey document, so treat the regional gap as solid and the specific numbers as approximate.
The Supreme Court settled the enforceability question on July 15, 2011, in a case arising from a one-year Kyoto lease with a renewal fee equal to two months' rent. It held that a renewal-fee clause stated clearly and specifically in the lease is enforceable, not a one-sided term voidable under Consumer Contract Act Article 10, unless the fee is disproportionately high relative to the rent and the renewal period.323334
Before this ruling, lower courts had gone the other way: a Kyoto tenant who signed a 2006 lease won a suit over the same kind of clause at the Kyoto District Court in 2009, and similar tenant-favorable rulings were reported in Osaka and Kyoto later that same year, before the Supreme Court's 2011 decision reversed course nationally (limitation: this pre-2011 case history traces to a single non-legal source).35 The full regional cost comparison and the courtroom history behind the ruling sit outside this overview; the split above is stated only so a reader does not assume a Tokyo convention applies nationwide.
Rejection Often Looks Like Silence, Not a "No"
Reporting on how agencies and landlords handle a reluctance to rent to a foreign applicant describes filtering that happens out of view of major portals, not an openly posted "no foreigners" listing. A landlord's reluctance is communicated to the agency, and the property is simply not offered to a foreign applicant, or the applicant is screened out during the paperwork stage, rather than being told the actual reason.36
Open refusal on a public portal is treated internally as reputationally and legally risky, so exclusion is more commonly handled upstream, before a listing is ever shown, than through a visible rejection a renter could point to.36
Because this exclusion happens before or during screening rather than as a stated reason afterward, a renter who is quietly filtered out this way has no clear signal to act on. No explanation is usually offered, which contrasts with a rejection issued for a documented reason such as insufficient income or an unresolved guarantor gap.23