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

[beanhead]

Plus of course a rogue's gallery of your ageing process in glorious technicolour splashed across the middle of it.

I wonder what happens if you don't have those old gaijin cards. I think I kept mine, but I am not sure.

[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?

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.

But why is the address the purchaser was living in at the time relevant?

[northSaver]

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.

So this is basically an issue of determining whether or not it became your main residence when you bought it? I'm still confused about the wording in the first post "the judicial scrivener who draws up the land registry documents will want to see proof of your address at the time you bought". On the day you buy a property you usually won't be living there. You'll only start living there after you bought it. So like Deep Blue says, why is it important to prove the address you were living at when you bought the property? Surely it's irrelevant?

Also confused by this: "AFAIK there is only one place you can do this, at an office in Yotsuya, and you have to apply in person". I live in Hokkaido and find it hard to believe that I would have to travel to Tokyo just to submit the documents. In fact this official page seems to suggest that you can send the form and supporting documents by post:
https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/ ... igner.html

In my case I have never lived in the property I bought (it's a rental property) so am wondering if this won't apply to me when I sell it. And if I keep it until I die then will my heirs need to go this complicated procedure when they sell it?

[Deep Blue]

I think most of us would have heard about this before if it really was as the OP described. I suspect something has been lost in translation.

[northSaver]

Thinking about this logically (not necessarily a good idea when it comes to government bureaucracy), maybe this is what's happening:

1. You buy a property and they put your name on the deed. They also put your address, which at the time of purchase is your previous address, not the address of the property.

2. When you sell it they have to update the property's historical record of ownership. If you lived in it, they want to put your name and address (the property's address) on the record, but they can't do that because the deed has your previous address. So they need proof that you lived in the property after you bought it.

3. Assuming you notified the authorities of your change of address after you moved in, they can get this proof from your immigration records if before July 2012, or jūminhyō if after.

4. The tax office can access the property's updated records if necessary in order to determine CGT liability.

It's just a guess, could be completely wrong. Any property experts on here who can put us straight please?

[Deep Blue]

All the assumptions on here assume a seller is resident in Japan and has all the paperwork associated with that and it is somehow required.

But non-residents can buy and sell property without a zairyu card or juminhyo etc.

So it stands to reason these documents can not be required for property transactions, either buying or selling. Maybe it is the most convenient way for residents to prove their identity or address but it can’t be an absolute requirement.

Verifying current address sounds like a KYC requirement for purchase but I’ve no idea why re-verifying a past address could be a requirement to sell.

[jane doe]

Thinking about this logically (not necessarily a good idea when it comes to government bureaucracy), maybe this is what's happening:

1. You buy a property and they put your name on the deed. They also put your address, which at the time of purchase is your previous address, not the address of the property.

2. When you sell it they have to update the property's historical record of ownership. If you lived in it, they want to put your name and address (the property's address) on the record, but they can't do that because the deed has your previous address. So they need proof that you lived in the property after you bought it.

3. Assuming you notified the authorities of your change of address after you moved in, they can get this proof from your immigration records if before July 2012, or jūminhyō if after.

4. The tax office can access the property's updated records if necessary in order to determine CGT liability.

It's just a guess, could be completely wrong. Any property experts on here who can put us straight please?

Thanks @northsaver, I think that's exactly right. It's because foreign residents didn't get onto the juminhyou until 2012. I'm guessing that the government didn't want to spend money digitising the old data and entering the old records into the local authority juminhyo system, which would have required too much joined up thinking. They probably didn't anticipate that this might cause issues for a sizeable number of foreign residents who had purchased property pre-July 2012, for the next few decades down the line. In our case, we lived in the property, and the land registry shows our address as the property a week after purchase.

What I experienced is only relevant for non-Japanese residents. If you are not a Japan resident, I would guess it's better to go with an estate agent who can walk you through whatever's required, unlike mine. What happens with investment properties is a very good question, as your registered address on deeds will presumably be either your business address or where you actually live. Again, outside my experience.

For us residents, basically, I think once we're in the alien registration system, scriveners will be using this to draw up the documents to transfer your title to the purchaser, or to update the historical land/property registry. Or both. I'm not an expert, just describing my experience, and as it nearly cost me the sale (Immigration told us it might take a month to issue the gaikokujin torokuhyou, but luckily pulled out the stops, and we returned in person to the office two days after application). If you don't have the same hiccup as I did, fantastic. I expect you can apply online and get the document by post, but as we heard about this 4 days before completion, this would have cost us the sale.

I tried showing all my old pre-2012 gaijin cards, but the scrivener said that was not enough proof. So I had no choice but to believe them and supply what they asked for.

About the document - it is basically a 3-page colour copy of all the data on all the gaijin cards they ask for pre-July 8 2012. In our case it was 2000 - 2012. Why? Because reasons I guess.

I offer up my experience in the hope that some of you might avoid the problems I had. I actually expected a large estate agent to have lots of experience by now in selling to non-Japanese, but this guy said it was the first time he'd had a case like this. However, the guy at Immigration told us he gets a steady stream of people like us needing the self-same document. You are welcome to be sceptical and if you like, just ignore this.

[northSaver]

I offer up my experience in the hope that some of you might avoid the problems I had. I actually expected a large estate agent to have lots of experience by now in selling to non-Japanese, but this guy said it was the first time he'd had a case like this. However, the guy at Immigration told us he gets a steady stream of people like us needing the self-same document. You are welcome to be sceptical and if you like, just ignore this.

Thanks for raising the issue, I would never have known about it otherwise. If anything it shows that you have to allow extra time for this kind of paperwork (up to 30 days, as you said) which is useful knowledge indeed.

[Deep Blue]

There are still lots of unanswered questions here - it doesn't make any sense at all to me. You don't need a juminhyou to buy a property in Japan, nor sell one.

[ClearAsMud]

First, at a technical level, the name of the document that was requested is a gaikokujin tōroku genpyō, or 外国人登録原票 (note the "gen"). It is indeed available only from a single location in Tokyo, but as has been pointed out, it can be requested by mail and -- since April 2022 -- it can even be requested by a designated representative rather than by the individual him- or herself (the MOJ page describing the document is here). The inconvenience (it can't be issued on the spot, so there will be a time lag in any case) means that most applicants request the document by post, which ends up taking at least a couple of weeks if post is used in both directions (a copy can be obtained in about a week by applying in person and providing them with a stamped, self-addressed envelope, and the time can be further shortened if you're willing to make two in-person trips to Yotsuya). The scrivener in this case might not have been aware he could have charged to obtain a copy of the document on jane doe's behalf, although he would likely have done it entirely by mail, using up extra time.

As for a jūminhyō, as long as your currently registered address matches the address on the land registry, it doesn't appear to be strictly necessary, even though it is typically among the documents requested for conducting real-estate transactions (how else would you prove that the addresses match?). An inkan shōmeisho registered to the same address is, however, required for anyone able to procure one. When a nonresident seller doesn't have either of these (a very real possibility, of course) acceptable substitutes must indeed be submitted, and typically take the form of a notarized affidavit or other official attestation (attested signatures replacing the personal seal). The seller's word or personally provided documents are never enough to serve as proof of the current owner's identity.

I'm not really sure why providing a gaikokujin tōroku genpyō would be required for jane doe in this particular case (like everyone else, I'm puzzled about the need to go back to the time the property was purchased), but you have to assume that the scrivener knows his/her profession and a valid reason does exist. Moving one's registered address before completing the sale would definitely cause problems in this respect, but solving such problems is why judicial scriveners exist, so you can probably rely on their advice (mostly). If you're an old-timer, the experience is certainly worth keeping in mind and also serves as a reminder that you might be interested in obtaining for a minimal fee a certified photocopy of the alien register that followed you as you moved from place to place early in your life in Japan (MOJ, by the way, definitely requires [edit: likes getting] a copy of this if you apply for naturalization). Talk about nostalgia.

See this site for a concise summary of what alternatives to a jūminhyō and an inkan shōmeisho are available to those who can't provide them (the same information will be found on other sites as well).