Renting while retired

[bunbunaz]

We retired to Japan last November. We moved in with my wife's family (parents and younger brother) with the expectation that we would probably do some renovations to make their house more comfortable for 5 adults living together. We waited to make sure everyone was happy with the new living arrangement. Well, suffice to say several little things do add up and since my wife's parents do not need our help at this point, we have decided it would be best for all parties if we moved out and got our own place with the intention of moving back once one or both parents have passed. Sooner if they needed care her brother was unable to provide.

We have just started our rental search and my gut feeling is that without a job or fixed yearly income (we have investments and savings), it's going to be tough to find some place that will rent to us even if the rent is easily within our means. Has anyone had this experience or have any advice for us on how to give ourselves the best chance of landing the rental unit we want?

[runmanTX]

Not my area of expertise but I believe most places require a guarantor or even two to sign a rental contract. More than likely, this will be required whether you are retired or have a job. Again, I'm not sure about this. I've had to get guarantors for my house (renting) even though I make more than both of them.

[RetireJapan]

This article was published yesterday. It is pretty grim reading but there appear to be specialist realtors that work with retired people too: https://catforehead.com/2023/07/03/dead-reckonings/

[bunbunaz]

Yup, as you mention a guarantor is most lIkely required and should not be an issue as we have family. Our main concern was the initial application looked very similar to the Orico one we filled out when applying for a Costco credit card that was denied. Of course we'd only been back in Japan for a few weeks at that point.

The timing of that article was bad. Saw it and while we are not that elderly (early 50s), that article did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Foreigner, older and retired. I'm sure that trifecta is just what landlords want to see. My wife did see some Japanese articles that said some places would be willing to rent to retired folks if they had savings that covered the total rent for the contract term. We shall see.....

[Isodora]

Our two (fully foreign) children moved out last year and this year. In both cases, parents being the guarantors never came up as an option. The guarantor for both is a company and of course it cost extra (maybe a one time fee of 20,000 Yen or so). A real estate agent I know said this is common practice these days in about 90% of all cases (at least for the Greater Tokyo Area) and claims that this is not restricted to foreigners at all. My guess that it is just another “business”.

I accompanied our first child to the (first) real estate agent, which he had chosen randomly near the area of his first choice (it was March and a very busy season). The first thing this guy told every agent he called - to find out if the selected place was available - was, that our son is a foreigner. When we asked if this is really necessary over the phone, he claimed that if not, he would get into trouble later. Most places rejected him unseen. That guy did not even bother to explain that our son was raised in Japan all his life (in the Japanese system). We gave up on this one and my son later found a much more helpful agent and was lucky - as he could move into a newly built place.

From my experiences over the years there are big differences in quality and expertise and willingness to help, just finding the best one may be pure luck or you could try Google for reviews.

Considering that your wife is Japanese and the fact that there are many apartments available you should not have too many problems though.

Good Luck!

[Gulliver]

Considering that your wife is Japanese and the fact that there are many apartments available you should not have too many problems though

I can speak from extensive first-hand experience that having a Japanese wife does not help. The majority of Japanese landlords do not want gaijin living in their properties, period.

Like the above poster alluded to, you might have to shop around for a competent realtor that has prior knowledge of non-racist landlords in the area you’re looking for. This kind of insight will make the process flow amazingly smoothly.

[Tkydon]

You didn't state where in Japan you are, but you might look at public housing - UR.

They do not impose similar restrictions to the Private Sector Landlords...

[sutebayashi]

The first thing this guy told every agent he called - to find out if the selected place was available - was, that our son is a foreigner. When we asked if this is really necessary over the phone, he claimed that if not, he would get into trouble later. Most places rejected him unseen.

I remember having this as the agents called up the landlords and asked if they were good with having a foreigner as a tenant.

Actually I was ok with that, because I did not want to rent from some racist.

I remember leaving a place I rented and being told that the landlord said I was the best tenant he had ever had

[concerned]

Maybe try UR.
Some years back, when I returned to Japan, I had no income history for previous year and my employer would not act as Guarantor. While most places rejected me, I was able to get a UR apartment by paying the rent 1 year in advance.

[bunbunaz]

Thanks for all the feedback. I remember renting 20 years ago when I worked and had some issues about being a foreigner but for the most part since I had a good job it didn't seem to be an issue. One place was rented to me by a language school and I had to attend an hour long meeting on trash as apparently the previous foreign tenant did not separate her trash. Even though my realtor vouched for me and explained I knew the rules after living here for 3 years, they sill made me go. But my realtor rocked! She attended with me which I thought was going above and beyond. The first time I dropped off my garbage on my way to work I turned around to see some older lady opening it up and checking it. Considering it was a hot summer day it did not bug me at all as I knew I had separated correctly so if she wanted to verify that, more power to her.

So as others have mentioned, a good realtor can make all the difference. Just like other places, there are good realtors and bad ones. I was lucky to find a good one via my company during my previous stay in Japan.

On this iteration, we're going through a JA agent. Didn't realize they even offered such services. During the application process we found out that since my wife's dad is an associate JA member, we get some pretty nice discounts on various fees. And reikin is waived. So that turned out to be a nice surprise. One funny thing was we originally had her dad as an emergency contact but they came back and said they needed someone younger! Why not make that clear from the start? Oh well, my sister-in-law was up to the task. For the guarantor, the application had a checkbox for using a third party company or providing your own. We decided the easier path would be to just use such a company, at least for this first go-around. Once we have some recent rental history we might opt for a different path next time.

Still awaiting the final word but they called today to verify several aspects of the application. So it is looking somewhat good but I am trying not to get my hopes up until it's a done deal. Will let everyone know how it turns out.

Oh, and the tip on UR is a good one. We had looked into UR a little bit already and it seems they have a pretty good reputation for working with retirees and foreigners.