It’s still more expensive than a house would have been
Just got our bill for property tax for this year. It is pretty much the same as last year, so not particularly interesting unless you don’t own a property and are interested in how much tax might be.
Property tax is based on the assessed value, not the market value. We bought the manshon a couple of years ago for 9m, and I think the current market value might be around 12m (based on other units that sold recently). For our manshon, the assessed land value is 223,000 and the unit value is 4.3m, so our tax is based on the combined 4.55m.
There are actually two separate taxes included in our property tax, the real estate tax (63,700 yen per year) and the city planning tax (14,300). As you can see above, we pay it in four installments.
Based on talking to other people, the tax on houses seems to be proportionally less than on manshons (compared to the market value). Perhaps the assessed value is less.
You also get a discount on property tax on a new build, probably to lessen the blow until depreciation kicks in. You can ask your estate agent or house builder to give you a rough idea of how much tax will be due on the property.
So basically property tax isn’t such a big deal, but you should be aware of it and how much you will need to set aside for it.
I was just filing some papers away and this bill was one of them, which I paid last month. Our total is ¥51,900 with 40k of that for real estate tax, and the rest for planning tax.
The land is about 75 tsubo, and the house is over 50yrs old, so worthless. But the kitchen is pretty modern: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eSEVTKmXgVbuvYFy5
If I recall correctly you have an amazingly low mortgage payment which might make that property tax bill even more noticeable. Have you found the tax going up since the initial bump? We live in a single family home in Tokyo and relatively speaking are paying a tax-to-assessed value (or at least to purchase price) that’s maybe half of what you report. I think our bill has gone up close to 10% a year but your helpful post is a good reminder to go back and look at those numbers more carefully; thanks for the post!
Yeah, our mortgage is floating interest currently at 0.5% and the loan was 9.9m for 30 years -so our monthly payment is slightly under 30,000 yen a month.
The property tax is… fine, I guess? I don’t think it is particularly onerous, but still confused as to why it is so high compared to people with houses 🙂
(hasn’t changed while we’ve been paying it)
As far as I know, the property tax for manshon is higher because they are ferro-concrete structures, and thus more sturdy = higher value, vs. single-family homes, which are usually wooden structures.
Recently went through some old property tax assessments and found that ours, for a single-family home 25 years old, is half of what it was initially, reflecting depreciation. We also do not find the tax especially onerous.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
We used to rent a huge concrete house from friends, and I remember the owners telling us the property tax was about the same as our rent.
Whats the typical annual property tax bill.for a SFH in the Tokyo region?
We live in the heart of Tokyo in a somewhat expensive area so I’m not sure this is typical but our bill last year was around 323,000 yen. That’s for a single family 3-story home of around 43 tsubo which sits on 37 tsubo of land.
Ah ok. I’m in Canada. I previously lived in Tokyo (Meguro ku). My spouse (Japanese) and I want to move back so I can finish my career there and roll into retirement. We rented a house last time. As a result I wasn’t familiar with property taxes.
Seems on par with where I am on the west coast. Here i pay about 250,000 JPY equivalent in annual property tax.
FYI: The discounted period for new home construction is supposed to last for 5 years. In my area it is roughly 50% off.
that`S a nice one. we pay way more. 🙁
My property tax is much lower this year for some reason (house). Over the last 7 years it’s gone down steadily from 130,000>> 110,000. Then this year is only 94,000. Quite a jump. Not complaining!
I built a house in Miura last summer and the first bill came now after the assessment. 150m2 house on 700m2 of land, 130k.
This is with the 50% discount I believe. Hopefully it’ll go down gradually…
Wow! Your property value is actually going up! I’m guessing this a good location in the city?
For comparison, we own a building for business. The building is over 40 years old, but concrete. We paid zero for the building (on paper) when we bought the land 13 years ago. The building is two stories with a concrete block warehouse. Can’t recall the exact square meters at the moment. The land is about 160 tsubo. I think there is still some building value in the assessment. We pay about 300,000 a year in property tax. This is in Okayama city.
Sadly it’s not going up, we just got a great price from the owner (a friend of my wife’s). He sold it to us for the pre-3/11 price…