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Before You Email the Agent: A Pre-Contact Due Diligence Checklist
The inquiry form is the cheapest step in a Japanese property purchase, and it is where most foreign buyers spend the least thought. You paste a listing URL, you write "is this still available," and you wait. What comes back is a sales conversation you are not yet equipped to steer. A better order exists. Before you send anything, an hour with public records does two things: it tells you whether a listing deserves your attention, and it hands you the questions worth asking when you make contact.
Why the homework changes the conversation
Two things happen when you check a listing before you write to the agent. You ask sharper questions, and you filter faster. An agent fielding "tell me about this apartment" hears a browser. An agent fielding "the building is from 1978, so was it retrofitted after the 1981 standard, and can I see the repair-reserve statement" hears a buyer who will not waste the office's time.
Filtering is the quieter benefit. Most listings that reach your screen will not survive a careful public-records pass. Learning to drop them yourself, before an email thread starts, is the difference between viewing three properties and viewing thirty. None of this replaces the professionals. It changes what you bring to them.
What public sources can tell you
A surprising amount of a listing is checkable without contacting anyone. The building's age sits in the listing itself, and it carries more weight than it looks. Japan tightened its earthquake-resistance rules in a revision to the Order for Enforcement of the Building Standards Act that took effect on 1 June 1981, usually called the new seismic standard (shin-taishin). The date that matters is when the building's construction was confirmed, not the year it was finished — a building can carry a completion year after 1981 and still have been designed to the older rule. Age alone does not condemn a structure, and many older buildings were later reinforced. A pre-1981 date is still worth a direct question about seismic retrofitting. Confirm the specifics against the Building Standards Act framework the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism administers, and treat any retrofit claim as something to verify in writing later.
Hazard exposure is public too. The national Hazard Map Portal lets you place almost any address inside the flood, landslide, and storm-surge layers your local government has drawn. A listing photographed in good weather tells you nothing about where the water goes. The map does. Look before the balcony view decides for you.
Zoning is the third public layer. Japan sorts land into use districts (yōto chiiki) that govern what may be built and rebuilt. The City Planning Act sets out thirteen of them, running from the most protective — Category I exclusively low-rise residential — through the residential, commercial and industrial bands to exclusively industrial, with a farmland-residential district added to the list in recent years. The district shapes light, noise, and whether the quiet lot next door can one day become something taller. Municipal zoning maps are public, and thirteen categories genuinely do take about an afternoon to learn.
For a condominium, two numbers deserve attention before any viewing: the monthly management fee (kanri-hi) and the repair reserve fund (shūzen tsumitatekin). A listing that shows both, with a reserve that looks plausible for the building's age, is being straight with you. A thin reserve on an old building is its own warning. MLIT's guidance on repair reserves is careful about what goes wrong and worth borrowing the caution from: where a building uses a staged-increase reserve — small contributions now, larger ones later — the risk it names is that owners fail to agree on the scheduled increase, and the fund falls short. What follows from a shortfall depends on the building; a one-off levy on every owner is one outcome, not an inevitability. A listing that omits the figures is not automatically hiding something, but the omission is a question you write down rather than a detail you assume away.
| What to check | Where it lives | What a gap means |
|---|---|---|
| Building age vs. the new seismic standard (in force 1 June 1981) | Listing spec sheet (construction year — but the confirmation date is what counts) | A pre-June-1981 confirmation is worth a direct retrofit question; an unstated year is itself a question |
| Flood, landslide, and storm-surge exposure | National Hazard Map Portal, searched by address | A high-risk layer does not rule a place out, but it reframes every "great view" line in the listing |
| Zoning and use district | Municipal zoning maps | A district that allows taller neighbors can change light and quiet years after you move in |
| Condominium management fee and repair reserve | Listing detail lines (kanri-hi, shūzen tsumitatekin) | A thin reserve for the building's age signals a future lump-sum assessment; missing figures are a question, not an assumption |
| Land and building tenure (freehold vs. leasehold) | Listing wording (shoyūken vs. shakuchiken) | Ambiguity here changes what you own and what you owe; settle it before anything else |
What you cannot verify from the outside
Some things do not yield to a browser, and pretending otherwise is where buyers get hurt.
The registry is the clearest example — though not for the reason people expect. Getting hold of it is not the hard part: the Real Property Registration Act lets any person request a 登記事項証明書 on payment of the fee, without needing a stake in the property, and land and buildings are recorded as separate registration records, one per parcel and one per building. What is specialist work is reading it correctly — who truly holds title, what is encumbered, and whether the seller can actually convey. In a purchase, a judicial scrivener (shihō-shoshi) examines the registry and handles the ownership transfer and its registration at the transaction itself. Treat title as a question for that professional, not a box you tick from home.
True vacancy and rent history is the second blind spot, and it matters most for investors. A listing may advertise a rent figure or an occupancy rate, and neither is auditable from outside. Rent rolls, lease terms, and the reason a unit sits empty are things you request and cross-check. Mark them as questions for the professional and the seller, not as facts.
Red flags worth an extra question
A listing signal is not proof of a problem. It is a prompt to ask more before you invest time. The table below is a place to start, not a verdict.
| Listing signal | Why it warrants an extra question |
|---|---|
| Price well below the area norm | Often a reason sits underneath (a leasehold, a rebuild restriction, a defect) rather than a simple bargain |
| "No management records" or missing reserve data on a condo | You cannot judge the building's financial health or the repair burden coming toward you |
| Old or undocumented extensions and reconfigured floor area | Work that no longer meets current rules can complicate resale, financing, and insurance |
| Leasehold or unclear tenure presented as ownership | You may be buying the right to use rather than to own; ground rent and renewal terms change the math |
| A vacant unit advertised with a rent or yield figure | Occupancy and rent history are not auditable from outside; treat the number as a claim to verify |
A low price relative to the area is the signal buyers most want to misread. Sometimes it is a motivated seller. More often there is a reason underneath: a leasehold the listing soft-pedaled, a rebuild restriction, a defect. The price gap itself is not the problem. The unasked question behind it is.
Who does what, and whom to ask
Three professionals do the work you cannot, and knowing their roles keeps you from asking the wrong person the wrong thing. A licensed real estate agent (takken-shi, 宅建士) is the party you verify listing facts with, and the only one permitted to give the legally required explanation of a property's important matters before you sign. A judicial scrivener (shihō-shoshi, 司法書士) examines the registry and handles the ownership transfer and its registration at the transaction. A tax advisor (zeirishi, 税理士) is who you ask about acquisition tax, holding costs, and how a purchase interacts with your own tax position. This article answers none of those questions. It tells you which specialist to bring each of them to.
When you reach the contract stage
The public-records pass ends where the formal disclosures begin. What you gather from home shapes the questions; the licensed explanation before signing puts the answers on the record, with a named person responsible for them. For what that meeting covers, read Juyo Jiko Setsumei for when you reach the contract stage. For how the offer, financing, and registration fit around it, these guides cover the stages on either side:
- How to Buy Property in Japan — the offer, contract, deposit, and registration this checklist feeds into
- Japan Mortgage for Foreigners — the loan screening and documents to line up before you commit
- Juyo Jiko Setsumei — the required explanation of important matters before you sign
Official sources
- Building Research Institute, 「新耐震基準」から40年を振り返る — the new seismic standard is the amendment to the Order for Enforcement of the Building Standards Act in force from 1 June 1981. kenken.go.jp (PDF)
- 都市計画法 (City Planning Act), Article 8(1)(i) — the thirteen use districts, listed in the statute. e-Gov statute text. laws.e-gov.go.jp
- MLIT Kinki Regional Development Bureau, 用途地域 — plain-language description of each of the thirteen districts. kkr.mlit.go.jp
- Hazard Map Portal Site (ハザードマップポータルサイト) — the national portal for flood, landslide, and other disaster-risk maps, with a search-by-address entry on its front page. disaportal.gsi.go.jp
- 不動産登記法 (Real Property Registration Act), Article 2(v) and Article 119(1) — one registration record per parcel of land and per building; any person may request a 登記事項証明書. e-Gov statute text. laws.e-gov.go.jp
- Legal Affairs Bureau (法務局), 登記事項証明書（土地・建物）、地図・図面証明書を取得したい方 — how to request a registry extract, including online. houmukyoku.moj.go.jp
- MLIT, マンションの修繕積立金に関するガイドライン (April 2011, revised June 2024) — repair reserve levels, and the risk that a staged-increase reserve falls short when owners cannot agree the increase. mlit.go.jp (PDF)
- National Tax Agency (NTA / 国税庁), No.7190 登録免許税のあらまし — registration and licence tax, which is a national tax. nta.go.jp
- Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (総務省), 不動産取得税 and 固定資産税の概要 — real property acquisition tax is levied by the prefectures; fixed asset tax is levied by every municipality (and by the Metropolitan Government inside Tokyo's 23 wards). Neither is administered by the National Tax Agency. soumu.go.jp (acquisition) · soumu.go.jp (fixed asset)