Buying Property in Japan, Step by Step: From Offer to Keys
The Japanese purchase process is orderly and well documented, which is good news. It is also unfamiliar in its details, and the point at which your money stops being refundable arrives earlier than buyers from other markets expect.
Here is the whole sequence.
1. Viewing and the purchase application
You view, you decide, and you submit a 買付申込書 (kaitsuke moushikomisho), a purchase application stating your price and rough terms. It is not a contract. Either side can still walk.
Some agents ask for a 申込証拠金, a small good-faith payment with the application. It is refundable if the deal does not proceed to contract. Get the refund terms in writing before you hand anything over.
Bring the viewing checklist to this stage rather than the next one. After the contract, questions get expensive.
2. Loan pre-screening, if you are financing
If you need a mortgage, the 事前審査 (pre-screening) runs in parallel with or just before the application. Foreign buyers should treat this as the real gate on the whole purchase, not a formality. Permanent residency, employment in Japan, and Japanese-language capability all change which banks will look at you at all. The mortgage and tax primer covers who lends to whom.
Sellers take a financed offer less seriously than a cash one, so a completed pre-screening is worth having before you apply on anything competitive.
3. The explanation of important matters
Before the contract, a licensed 宅地建物取引士 reads you the 重要事項説明書, the statement of important matters. This is a legal requirement, it is delivered aloud, and it commonly takes sixty to ninety minutes.
It covers zoning, road access and rebuild rights, easements, restrictive covenants, utility connections, known defects, and for a mansion the bylaws and fee structure. This is where problems surface if they are going to.
Do not treat this as a ceremony to sit through. Ask for the document in advance, read it before the session, and bring a translator whose Japanese is up to legal vocabulary. It can be delivered remotely by video (IT重説), which matters if you are buying from overseas.
4. The sales contract and the deposit
You sign the 売買契約書 and pay the 手付金 (tetsukekin), the deposit. Commonly somewhere around five to ten percent of the price, though it is negotiable and varies.
This is the moment the money becomes serious. Until a date named in the contract, either side can cancel under 手付解除: you walk away and forfeit the deposit, or the seller cancels and returns double. After that date, cancellation means damages, not just the deposit.
Two clauses to read carefully:
- 融資特約 (financing contingency). If your loan is refused, this lets you cancel and recover the deposit. It has a deadline. Without this clause a loan refusal costs you the deposit.
- 契約不適合責任. Since the 2020 Civil Code reform this replaced the old 瑕疵担保責任 and governs what happens if the property does not match what was contracted. Note how long the seller's liability runs, and whether an individual seller has excluded it, which is common.
5. Full loan review
With a signed contract the bank runs the 本審査, the full review, then prepares the loan agreement. Expect roughly a month between contract and settlement, sometimes longer for a foreign applicant or an unusual property.
6. Settlement and handover
Everything happens on one day, usually in a meeting room at the lender's branch. Present: you, the seller, both agents, the bank, and a 司法書士 (judicial scrivener) who verifies identity and documents and then files the transfer of title.
In sequence: the loan draws down, the balance goes to the seller, the agent's commission and the scrivener's fee are paid, taxes and building fees are apportioned to the day, and you get the keys. Registration follows within days.
What it costs on top of the price
Budget separately for these. On a used property they commonly total somewhere in the range of six to ten percent of the purchase price:
- 仲介手数料, agency commission. Legally capped, and for most transactions the ceiling is three percent of the price plus 60,000 yen plus consumption tax. Lower-priced properties fall under a different cap.
- 登録免許税, registration tax on the transfer and on any mortgage.
- 司法書士報酬, the scrivener's fee.
- 印紙税, revenue stamps on the contract.
- 不動産取得税, the acquisition tax. This one is different: it arrives as a bill from the prefecture months after you move in, and it surprises people who have already spent their reserve on furniture.
- 火災保険, fire insurance, effectively required by any lender.
- Apportioned property tax and, for a mansion, apportioned monthly fees.
Where a foreign buyer usually gets stuck
Ownership is not the problem. Japan places no nationality restriction on owning land or buildings, and buying property does not grant you a visa.
The friction is elsewhere: financing without permanent residency, remitting funds and satisfying the bank's anti-money-laundering checks, needing a Japanese address or a registered representative for the title filing, and finding an agent willing to work through the process in English. Solve those before you find a property you love, not after.
A realistic timeline
From accepted application to keys, four to eight weeks is normal for a cash purchase, and six to ten weeks with a mortgage. What tends to stretch it is not the paperwork but the bank, and, for older properties, whatever the important matters document turns up about road access and rebuild rights.