Header image: an old house among newer ones in Sanada, Ueda, Nagano, photographed in March 2026 by Syced and released under CC0 on Wikimedia Commons. It is not a property for sale.
Get an Email When a Matching House in Japan Is Listed: A Saved Search for Buyers Abroad
Save a search with your area, budget and must-haves, and an alert emails you the houses that match after you save it. On Buy Houses Japan, the free Explorer plan emails one saved search once a week, and Homebuyer emails every saved search daily or weekly.
This guide is for one reader: you live outside Japan, you expect to buy in the next six to eighteen months, and you know roughly where and how much. Checking Japanese portals every day is not realistic, but the right house may be listed while you are not looking.
When a saved search is the right tool
- It fits when your area and budget are settled enough to write down, and you want to see what appears each week without searching again.
- It does not fit if you are still choosing between regions. Browse the 47 prefecture pages or compare prices by prefecture first.
- It is not for apartments, land on its own or municipal akiya bank listings. Buy Houses Japan covers detached houses from supported Japanese property portals, not akiya banks. For akiya banks, see LIFULL HOME'S Akiya Bank vs Buy Houses Japan.
Step 1: Write the brief as one sentence
Put the conditions you would reject a house for in one sentence: the area, the top price, and two or three must-haves. For example:
Detached house in Nagano under ¥15 million with parking and at least 200 m² of land
Leave out what you would merely like. Every extra condition shrinks the list, and an alert that never fires is no use.
Step 2: Run it and check the size of the result
Run the Nagano example to see what it returns today. Your first search runs without an account.
Then judge the result against the prefecture as a whole. On 17 October 2026 at 14:38 UTC, our Nagano page held 310 detached houses with photos, a yen price and a successful check of the source listing in the last 14 days:
| Nagano Prefecture, 17 October 2026 | Value |
|---|---|
| Houses on the page | 310 |
| Quarter of houses at or below | ¥7.9 million (about US$51,000) |
| Median asking price | ¥17.49 million (about US$114,000) |
| Three quarters at or below | ¥26.99 million (about US$175,000) |
| Under ¥5 million | 48 |
| Built in 1980 or earlier | 122 of the 308 with a known year |
| Median land area | 287 m² |
So a ¥15 million cap keeps somewhere between a quarter and half of Nagano's houses, and a 200 m² land minimum suits a prefecture where the median plot is 287 m². If your first search returns a handful of houses, loosen one condition; if it returns hundreds, add one.
USD equivalents are approximate, using ¥154 per US$1 for illustration.
Step 3: Save it and choose daily or weekly
On the results, press Get alerts, give the search a name, choose the email frequency and press Enable email alerts. Saving needs a free account: sign in with Google or with a link sent to your email.
| Explorer (free) | Homebuyer (¥2,980 a month, about US$19) | |
|---|---|---|
| Saved searches that send email | 1 | All of them |
| Frequency | Weekly | Daily or weekly |
| Searches | 5 to start, then 1 credit a day up to a balance of 5 | Unlimited |
Plans are charged in yen. See current plans. You can change or stop an alert at any time under Alerts in Saved homes, and every email carries a link that stops that search's alerts.
Step 4: Know what the email contains
- Only houses added after you saved. Houses already in the index when you saved are in your search results, not in your alerts. If nothing new matches, no email is sent.
- Up to 10 houses per email, each with a photo, its city and its price, plus a line saying how many more are waiting on the site.
- Links to each house's page on Buy Houses Japan, where you can open the original listing, and a button that reruns your saved search.
- In English or Japanese. The email follows your account language: Japanese if you chose Japanese, otherwise English.
Step 5: When a match arrives
- Open the house page and the original listing. Note the listing date and who is selling.
- Check the address on the hazard maps before anything else: how to check a hazard map.
- Check the year built, the road and the land rights. Houses built before 1981 need a closer look: earthquake standards for old houses.
- If it still fits, plan the questions for the agent with the home viewing checklist, or brief someone to view it for you with a video viewing brief.
What an alert will not tell you
- Houses that never reach a supported portal. A house offered only on an agency's own site or a town's akiya bank will not appear in our search.
- Price cuts. An alert reports newly added houses, not price changes on houses you have already seen.
- That a house is still available. We check the source listing regularly and drop houses that fail, but a house can sell between a check and your email. See how we check.
- Anything about condition. The listing describes the house; an inspection tells you about it.
Other ways to get alerts
| What you get | Cost | Language | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy Houses Japan | Email with houses added since the last alert that match your saved search | Explorer free (1 search, weekly). Homebuyer for every search, daily or weekly | English or Japanese |
| Akiya Japan | Daily or weekly email when new matching properties are listed | Paid plans, US$5 a month or US$50 a year | English |
| Real Estate Japan | Email alerts set up from an account | We saw no fee | English |
| Housing Japan | Tokyo property alerts: a daily 8am email with matching properties uploaded or updated the day before | Free | English |
| SUUMO | New-listing emails for a saved condition (この条件でメールを受け取る) and a price-update email on each listing (価格更新お知らせメール) | Free | Japanese |
Read on each site on 17 October 2026. SUUMO carries far more houses than the English sites and even emails you about price changes, but its pages and emails are in Japanese; see whether you can use SUUMO in English. For a fuller comparison of the English sites, see Akiya Japan vs Real Estate Japan vs Buy Houses Japan.
Questions about house alerts in Japan
Are new-listing alerts free on Buy Houses Japan?
Yes, for one saved search. The free Explorer plan emails one saved search once a week. Homebuyer, at ¥2,980 a month (about US$19), emails every saved search, daily or weekly. Saving a search needs a free account, though your first search runs without one.
How quickly will I hear about a new house?
With a daily alert, within a day of the house reaching Buy Houses Japan; with a weekly alert, within a week. A house reaches us after it appears on the source portal, so the agent's own site or a Japanese portal can show it first. For a popular area, choose daily.
Can I get alerts for a whole prefecture?
Yes. A sentence such as "detached house in Nagano under ¥15 million" covers the prefecture. A whole-prefecture search with no other limits may send many houses at once, so add your top price and one or two must-haves to keep each email worth reading.
Do alerts include akiya bank houses?
No. Buy Houses Japan does not include municipal akiya bank listings. It does include older and empty houses listed on property portals, which you can browse on the akiya page. For a town's own akiya bank, check that town's website or a national akiya bank site.
Can I stop or change an alert?
Yes. Every alert email has a link that stops that search's alerts, and you can change the frequency or turn an alert off under Alerts in Saved homes. On Explorer, turning one alert off frees your weekly alert for another saved search.
Set up your first saved search
Write the brief, check the result, then save it. Start with a search: your first search runs without an account, and saving it for alerts takes a free sign-in.
Sources: our Nagano inventory and plans, read on 17 October 2026; the alert behaviour described is how Buy Houses Japan's saved searches work on that date. Rival features were read on each site's own pages the same day: Akiya Japan's plans page, Real Estate Japan's homepage, Housing Japan's alerts page and SUUMO's listing and search pages. Counts and plans can change.