BLOG
ROOCAS ONE`s Blog
ROOCAS ONE`s Blog
2019.02.15
For many foreigners the issues start even before they’ve begun to look for properties! Almost all real estate agencies don’t offer services in English at all so for those without Japanese language skills it can be a daunting task finding somewhere with services in English. If you do speak Japanese then some agencies just don’t want to deal with foreign customers due to the probabilities of the customers being rejected for many apartments. It’s just too much legwork for some so they’d rather spend their time with Japanese customers that won’t get rejected for apartments on ridiculous grounds.
This is why ROOCAS ONE began to offer services specialized in finding foreigners in Japan apartments in English, Russian and other languages in order to ease the process of renting apartments in Japan for foreigners.
This is the biggest problem foreigners have when finding places to rent in Japan. It doesn’t matter how much of a model citizen you are or how many years you’ve lived in Japan, some owners just point blank refuse to rent their properties to foreigners. There isn’t a law prohibiting owners from discriminating against potential tenants by race, so landlords can even specify in their property listing “No foreigners allowed” just like they can put “No pets allowed”. But why don’t they want to rent to foreigners? This is because many landlords in Japan are elderly and believe bad stereotypes about foreigners such as not paying rent on time, destroying the property, being noisy and not separating garbage correctly, etc.
Many owners won’t even state on their listing, and won’t tell the realtor when the realtor first calls the owner to check if foreigners are ok because they don’t want to sound discriminatory. They will literally wait for the potential tenant to begin the application process before denying them on some other obscure grounds. This can be really heartbreaking when a customer falls in love with a prospective property and they’re given the OK to apply only to be rejected halfway through like this.
This is why all of our properties at ROOCAS ONE are foreigner friendly, we communicate with the owners directly before to ensure they will rent to foreigners, eliminating this issue and allowing our customers to feel at ease using our service.
Following on from the previous point, many owners will use the excuse of there being a language barrier and them being worried about being able to communicate with the tenant as grounds to reject the application. Even when the potential tenant speaks fluent Japanese, just as well as any Japanese person it happens.
When there are owners willing to rent to foreigners, sometimes if the tenant can’t communicate well in Japanese or at all, the owner will get cold feet and back out because again they’re worried about not being able to communicate with the tenant should any problems arise.Again, this is why we offer language services to assist you in this process.
In Japan almost all apartments require you to have a guarantor who is a Japanese national. The guarantor must sign a contract agreeing to pay in the event that the tenant fails to pay for their rent or damage to the apartment etc. Usually when Japanese people sign up for apartments they use their family members or close friends as a guarantor. However for foreigners in Japan often don’t know many Japanese nationals, let alone have a close enough relationship with them to ask them to be a guarantor. Though there are Japanese people who don’t have guarantors available, so for that purpose there are guarantor companies that act as guarantors but for a hefty fee.
With ROOCAS ONE you don’t need a Japanese citizen to be your guarantor, you only need someone who lives in Japan and has a phone number to be your guarantor! Making the process easy!
Last but not least, initial move in costs are another major factor as to why it's so hard for foreigners to rent in Japan. The initial costs to move into an apartment can be up to 5 times more than the rent itself. So to rent an apartment with a monthly rent of 100,000 it could cost up to 500,000 yen! There’s all these bizarre fees like “key money” also known as reikin, which is money you have to pay to the owner as a thank you for them renting the apartment to you in the first place. The potential tenant also has to pay for the locks to be changed and cleaning fees which would normally be costs the owner has to pay themselves in other countries. Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do when it comes to these fees, as some owners would happily have their properties sitting empty than lower these fees, all you can do is save up money in anticipation.
