Chapter 1 — Can you actually buy property in Japan?

The short answer

Yes. Completely, and with fewer restrictions than almost anywhere else in the developed world.

You do not need to be a resident. You do not need a visa. You do not need a Japanese spouse, a Japanese company, a local partner, or government approval. You do not need to have set foot in the country. A tourist who arrived last Tuesday has exactly the same right to buy a house in Kyoto as a Japanese citizen whose family has lived on that street for two hundred years.

And what you get is full freehold ownership. Not a lease. Not a right to use. Not a 99-year concession that reverts to the state. The land and the building are yours, registered in your name, inheritable by your children, sellable to anyone you like.

That is unusual. Foreigners in Thailand cannot own land at all. Singapore restricts landed residential property to citizens and permanent residents. Several countries in the region structure foreign ownership as long-term rights rather than title, and a number of developed markets apply additional taxes or approval requirements to overseas buyers.

Japan has none of this. There is no foreign ownership register, no additional stamp duty for overseas buyers, no minimum investment, no requirement to occupy. In the eyes of Japanese property law, you are simply a buyer.

Why people don't believe this

Almost every foreign buyer we speak to has heard otherwise. The misinformation tends to come in three flavours.

"Foreigners can't own land, only buildings." This is a real rule — in China. It has never been the rule in Japan. Land and building are registered separately in Japan, which is genuinely unusual and which we come back to in Chapter 6, but both are freehold and both are available to you.

"You need permanent residency." You do not. Residency status affects your ability to get a mortgage, your tax position, and whether you can legally live in the house — all of which matter, and all of which we cover — but none of them touch your right to buy.

"There's a foreign buyer tax." Several countries have one. Japan does not. You will pay acquisition tax, registration tax and stamp duty at exactly the same rates as a Japanese buyer.

The two things property does not give you

Here is where expectations most often go wrong.

It does not give you a visa

Buying property in Japan gives you no right to live in Japan.

Not a visa. Not residency. Not a longer tourist stay. Not a path to any of these. You can own a ¥200,000,000 house in Kyoto and still be limited to ninety days at a time as a tourist, with no more standing at immigration than someone who owns nothing.

This surprises people, because a number of countries have run residency-by-investment schemes tied to property. Japan has never had one, has shown no interest in creating one, and if anything has moved in the opposite direction. As of October 2025 the requirements for the Business Manager visa, the route many foreign entrepreneurs used, were raised substantially. Chapter 3 goes through what remains available.

It does not give you a Japanese bank account

This one catches people almost as often, and it is more immediately practical.

Owning a house in Japan does not entitle you to open a Japanese bank account. Most banks require residency, and property ownership does not substitute for it. That matters more than it sounds, because a house generates bills — property tax, water, electricity, gas, the neighbourhood association — and many Japanese suppliers will not accept a card issued outside Japan. It is a solved problem, and Chapter 9 sets out how. But it is not solved by buying the house, and it is worth knowing before you start rather than after completion.

None of this means you cannot own property comfortably from abroad. It means the house, the visa and the money are three separate problems, solved in three separate ways, and confusing them will cost you time.

What you can do with a property you own

Plenty, even without a visa.

Use it yourself when you visit. Within your permitted stay. For most Western passport holders that is ninety days visa-free, and there is no annual cap on entries, though repeated back-to-back stays will attract questions at immigration.

Leave it empty. Legal, common, and more expensive than people expect. Chapter 11 covers what an empty house in Japan actually costs you and what it does to the building.

Rent it out long-term. Entirely permitted for non-resident owners. You will need a management company, and you will have Japanese tax obligations. Chapter 11.

Rent it short-term. Possible, heavily regulated, and much harder than the internet suggests. The 180-night annual cap under the Private Lodging Business Act is only the beginning; Kyoto in particular imposes conditions that catch out most foreign owners. Chapter 11 deals with this properly, because it is where the most money gets lost.

Renovate it. No restriction on foreign owners. Building regulations, however, apply to everyone equally, and older houses carry constraints that are not obvious from photographs. Chapter 11.

Sell it, or leave it to your children. Freehold means freehold. Note that a non-resident seller faces withholding at settlement — Chapter 11.

So what is actually difficult?

If the law is this open, why does buying in Japan have a reputation for being hard?

Because the difficulty is not legal. It is practical, and it is real.

Everything is in Japanese. Every listing, every contract, every disclosure document, every tax form. Machine translation handles listings adequately, as Chapter 4 shows. It does not handle a thirty-page legal disclosure that you are required to understand before signing.

Nobody answers your enquiries. This is the single most common experience of foreign buyers, and Chapter 5 explains exactly why it happens and how to fix it.

Financing is hard. Not impossible, but hard, and if you are not resident in Japan you should plan on paying cash. Chapter 10.

The building has less value than you think. Japanese wooden houses are typically treated as having no residual value after twenty-two years. A thirty-year-old house is usually priced as land. This changes how you should think about renovation, resale and yield — Chapter 6.

Some properties cannot legally be rebuilt. A house on a plot that does not meet the road frontage requirement can be repaired but never replaced. These properties are cheap for exactly this reason, and they are all over the market. Chapter 12.

None of these are reasons not to buy. They are reasons to understand what you are buying, which is what the rest of this book is for.

A note on who this book is for

We have written this for someone who is seriously considering a purchase and wants to understand the mechanics rather than be sold to.

That means some of what follows is unhelpful to us commercially. Chapter 4 shows you how to search the Japanese property portals yourself, without an agent, which is genuinely the most efficient way to see what exists. Chapter 10 tells you honestly that most non-resident buyers will not get a mortgage. Chapter 12 lists the ways a Japanese property can go wrong.

We have taken the view that a buyer who understands the market makes better decisions, moves faster when the right property appears, and is a better client than one who has been kept in the dark. If you read this book and buy without us, that is a reasonable outcome.

Next: Chapter 2 — Why Japan, and why now.