Big in Japan: How to rent an apartment in Tokyo {Gadling}

Feb 5th 2008 8:41AM To balance this out a bit from a landlords point of view as I rent several places in Tokyo, some to Gaijin and some to Nihonjin. First the landlord also has to pay one months rent to the agency so its not free money to him. Second in Tokyo it is very rare to get the key money from anything but low rent units, anything over 250k and there is very little chance of key money. Most japanese you rent to will stay for many many years so the upfront costs are spread over a long period up to ten years, Finally the rules are actually very much biased against the landlord, it is literally impossible to evict a tennant even if they are many months in arrears, experience tells landlords that gaijin are more likely to fall into this group of people and landlords will prejudice based on experience ....

My advice is scrape the money together and buy a place, Tokyo is good value and the yields of 5-10% are way higher than rents in any other major city in the world compared to where you can fund the mortgage ( if you can get one but thats another story .... )