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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

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.

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.