Watch out for this if selling a place you bought before July 2012!

[jane doe]

Just had a brown trouser moment days before scheduled completion of sale of an apartment because even though the agent was Century 21, our agent did not know about this. Quite possibly, unless your agent specialises in non-Japanese residents, they won't either. Result, we had to reschedule completion and risked the buyer pulling out after exchange of contracts, and even chasing us for damages. Technically it was our fault, even though we would expect the agent to warn us about paperwork we needed.

So, as I understand it, the problem was this. If you are not a Japanese national and you bought a house or flat before the Zairyu card was introduced on 8 July 2012, the judicial scrivener who draws up the land registry documents will want to see proof of your address at the time you bought. I guess this will also make the time you lived there official for property and capital gains tax purposes too. As this will not appear on your juminhyou, you will need to apply for a 外国人登録票, or gaikokujintourokuhyou. AFAIK there is only one place you can do this, at an office in Yotsuya, and you have to apply in person. They say it takes a month, so you need to plan for getting it if you bought pre-Zairyu card.

[northSaver]

Thanks for the warning, but I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean the address you were living at when you bought the property? I've just checked the official documents of a property I bought pre-2012 and my address at the time is on them. Not sure what you call them in Japanese but one looks like a deed. Can't the scrivener use one of these?

One potential problem is that I've since changed address (and still have the property I bought). My new address is on the juminhyou, presumably with the date I moved, and it matches the address on my current zairyu card. I wonder if my old address on the property documents might cause a problem in the future when it's time to sell? Maybe I should update them with the new address somehow? Not sure.

[Deep Blue]

I was not resident in Japan when I bought our house in 2014, so I didn't have a zairyu card or juminhyou.

I have not considered selling our house but wonder if I could run in to some similiar problems. I would not have any easy way to prove where I was living back then, I was renting a place outside of Japan. Not even sure why it matters either?

[Deep Blue]

Didnt ARC's have your current residental address on the back too?

[Wales4rugbyWC23]

I had a similar problem to this but it was with a car that was being given away for parts- not even being sold. I bought the car in 2008 and wasn't on the national register jyuminhyo and the guy at the car registry place would not allow the car to be deregistered until I had found evidence of that I had lived at that place where it said on the shaken certificate.

[jane doe]

So basically the way the guy at Immigration explained it was that for people like judicial scriveners, they need the proof that we lived at the address pre 2012, and the juminhyou system doesn't capture what happened pre-Zairyu card. We had all our old gaikokujin touroku shomei shos (ie pre 2012 gaijin cards), and the relevant card showed the property address. But the judicial scrivener said that wasn't satisfactory proof, and we had to apply for this specific document. The document we got was basically Immigration saying 'here's a copy of all our records on Jane Doe from 1 January 2000 to 9 July 2012'. Photos, changes of address and all. They highlighted the entry where we registered that we lived at the property we are selling. It was all hand written in tiny almost illegible writing, which seemed to be a colour photocopy of all of our gaijin cards (Mr Doe had to do the same). All very quaint. Then Immigration added a wad of duly hankoed declarations that they had received our request on such and such a date, making up a four page dossier.
Why local authorities didn't digitise this information and feed it into the juminhyou system in 2012 is a mystery to me. So now we old gaijin are saddled with making a special application to Immigration, in person, if we need to prove an address pre-2012 for things like this.
It also means sharing a load of extra personal info that you might not even want to share like, I dunno, visa status at random times in the past from 2000, with whoever demands this information for stuff like house or car sales. Plus of course a rogue's gallery of your ageing process in glorious technicolour splashed across the middle of it.

Anyway, I guess the answer to the question 'Why?' is 'because reasons'. Just don't be surprised. It seems to be quite a thing, because the Immigration guy was very clear that they are having to issue a lot of these.

[RetireJapan]

It sounds like this is an issue stemming from the fact that foreign nationals did not have jyuuminhyou before the zairyu card was introduced. So it is the lack of jyuuminhyou that is the issue, not anything to do with the zairyu card itself (I guess because jyuuminhyou comprise a record of official addresses, and foreign residents have only had them since July 2012).

[jane doe]

Yes, exactly that, Ben. They just didn't think how it would come back to haunt us years down the line, and they didn't bother to digitise the old information to avoid the problem.

[Deep Blue]

So what about all the non-resident foreigners who own property in Japan? What do they do if they need to sell their property?

And why does the address you lived at when you purchased a property have any bearing on anything anyway?

[RetireJapan]

So what about all the non-resident foreigners who own property in Japan? What do they do if they need to sell their property?

And why does the address you lived at when you purchased a property have any bearing on anything anyway?

If you sell your residence, you can get a big tax break on any capital gains tax owed.

Wouldn't matter if you were selling a property you weren't living in.