5 ms·

Fiber to the home (ftth) is dead cheap here, only about US$50 (¥6500) for 1Gbps unmetered. Rent for a cheap 2LDK really depends on how far to the station, how n

Fiber to the home (ftth) is dead cheap here, only about US$50 (¥6500) for 1Gbps unmetered. Rent for a cheap 2LDK really depends on how far to the station, how new, etc. As a bachelor you could get a nice 50-60sqm 2 room plus Living/Dining/Kitchen in Yoyogi for ¥150,000-200,000 per month. The hard part will be getting a landlord to accept your lease application without being hired by a local company. Rent guarantee companies can be used to avoid having to find a Japanese guarantor. Serviced apartments run by foreign companies will be large and well positioned, but start around ¥500,000 per month. A short term stay in an AirBnB of 2-3 months might be possible, but you’ll only be able to get a tourist visa, so no earning an income locally and be really careful of overstaying. Investor visas are not so hard to come by compared to US (lower monetary bar) but you’ll still a handsome sum to get one.

hrktb 8y ago
> The hard part will be getting a landlord to accept your lease application It was 10 years ago, so I wonder how much the situation changed. For me this was a pretty severe issue. Below 120,000 yens/ month, even with a long term visa, years of residency and a stable employment covering 3x the monthly lease amount and a co-signing by a Japanese spouse, getting the landlord to even see the application was hard. We would show up at the agency, and whole swaths of offers would just be set apart under a 'no foreigner' policy, and the rest was direct negotiation with the landlord. Above 150,000 I felt we had more choice, but then we were into mildly premium territory.
- laurieg 8y ago
  Housing discrimination is a very real issue even today. Large swathes of properties have a "No foreigners" policy. One of the most shocking experiences I had in Japan was when I went with my friend to go house hunting and had to sit through the estate agent calling different apartment owners and try to plead his case. Some of the owners asked things like "What does he look like?". When I got my current apartment in Japan I thanked the estate agent profusely and said that he'd been a great help and that it's often difficult to find a good place. He said "No worries, you're not Chinese like him!" gesturing towards a Chinese customer sitting on the other side of the shop. The flipside of this is that when you're in you have a lot of rights as a tenant.
  - aikinai 8y ago
    What kinds of places are you and the grandparent looking for? I’ve visited tons of places in Japan and talked to plenty of friends and coworkers about their apartment searches and never heard of one place with a foreigner restriction (including ten years ago and more recently). Are you talking about super countryside or something? My searches have always been in Tokyo.
    - hrktb 8y ago
      Tokyo, 1~2LDK (~60m2) range. I moved about 6 times for various reason, including pure curiosity. Everytime I had the issue. Now, the vendor might not explicit the restrictions. Sometimes we talked for 10~20 min, I ask for the full binder of offers to look for myself and am told some of them won’t be available. Or some of the agency people woud pre-filter the offer they hand over, and when you ask to see some they removed they’ll explain those “were burned by previous foreign renters” (that’s the canned response) Also your friends and co-worker might be part of other demographics where they are exempted. For instance single white women in their 20s will get a pass on basically most conditions (except revenue of course). Also working in a super top tier national company (i.e NEC, NTT, Sony, softbank etc.) will open a lot of doors. You are asked upfront about your employment so you won’t hit further roadblocks at this point.
      - aikinai 8y ago
        Oh okay, thanks for elaborating! Yeah, most of the people I know looking for places work at a famous multinational, so I guess that explains why I haven't seen the issue even when self-selecting places from online listings. And other friends might be just accepting the pre-filtered options from their agent.
    - laurieg 8y ago
      Regular single occupancy apartments (Either studios or 1K). I think some estate agents are a lot more smooth about it than others. They'll only show you pre-vetted "foreigner ok" apartments. My experience is that if you go on a property site, draw up a list of places you're interested in then prepare to be disappointed.

hrktb 8y ago

> The hard part will be getting a landlord to accept your lease application It was 10 years ago, so I wonder how much the situation changed. For me this was a pretty severe issue. Below 120,000 yens/ month, even with a long term visa, years of residency and a stable employment covering 3x the monthly lease amount and a co-signing by a Japanese spouse, getting the landlord to even see the application was hard. We would show up at the agency, and whole swaths of offers would just be set apart under a 'no foreigner' policy, and the rest was direct negotiation with the landlord. Above 150,000 I felt we had more choice, but then we were into mildly premium territory.

laurieg 8y ago
Housing discrimination is a very real issue even today. Large swathes of properties have a "No foreigners" policy. One of the most shocking experiences I had in Japan was when I went with my friend to go house hunting and had to sit through the estate agent calling different apartment owners and try to plead his case. Some of the owners asked things like "What does he look like?". When I got my current apartment in Japan I thanked the estate agent profusely and said that he'd been a great help and that it's often difficult to find a good place. He said "No worries, you're not Chinese like him!" gesturing towards a Chinese customer sitting on the other side of the shop. The flipside of this is that when you're in you have a lot of rights as a tenant.
- aikinai 8y ago
  What kinds of places are you and the grandparent looking for? I’ve visited tons of places in Japan and talked to plenty of friends and coworkers about their apartment searches and never heard of one place with a foreigner restriction (including ten years ago and more recently). Are you talking about super countryside or something? My searches have always been in Tokyo.
  - hrktb 8y ago
    Tokyo, 1~2LDK (~60m2) range. I moved about 6 times for various reason, including pure curiosity. Everytime I had the issue. Now, the vendor might not explicit the restrictions. Sometimes we talked for 10~20 min, I ask for the full binder of offers to look for myself and am told some of them won’t be available. Or some of the agency people woud pre-filter the offer they hand over, and when you ask to see some they removed they’ll explain those “were burned by previous foreign renters” (that’s the canned response) Also your friends and co-worker might be part of other demographics where they are exempted. For instance single white women in their 20s will get a pass on basically most conditions (except revenue of course). Also working in a super top tier national company (i.e NEC, NTT, Sony, softbank etc.) will open a lot of doors. You are asked upfront about your employment so you won’t hit further roadblocks at this point.
    - aikinai 8y ago
      Oh okay, thanks for elaborating! Yeah, most of the people I know looking for places work at a famous multinational, so I guess that explains why I haven't seen the issue even when self-selecting places from online listings. And other friends might be just accepting the pre-filtered options from their agent.
  - laurieg 8y ago
    Regular single occupancy apartments (Either studios or 1K). I think some estate agents are a lot more smooth about it than others. They'll only show you pre-vetted "foreigner ok" apartments. My experience is that if you go on a property site, draw up a list of places you're interested in then prepare to be disappointed.