Based on our experience helping foreigners finding apartment in Sapporo, these are 5 reasons why finding apartment in Japan is way harder for foreigners, but all of them are related to one main factor: LANGUAGE BARRIER:
1. Long waiting time.
Moving into an apartment in Japan is NOT an instantaneous process; the process takes 1-2 weeks from application, background check, and approval. For more information regarding Japanese apartment rental procedure, please check this link.
2. Discrimination
Japanese owners sometimes do NOT want to accept foreign tenants. There are some owners who openly reject applications from foreigners, mostly due to concern that foreigners do not understand Japanese rules like garbage separation, as well as concern about not being able to communicate properly with the tenant.
3. Difficulties finding emergency contact
All Japanese apartment rental applications require an emergency contact who resides in Japan and be able to speak Japanese. In some cases, the emergency contact needs to be a Japanese national. Foreigners who just arrived in Japan may have trouble finding an individual who is willing to be their emergency contact.
4. Language problem
During the background check process, sometimes the owners/management companies will give a direct phone call to potential tenants for identity check. In some cases, foreigners who do not understand Japanese at all end up getting rejected despite waiting for 1-2 weeks.
5. Difficulties finding guarantor
Applying for apartments in Japan requires a guarantor, which is an individual or a company that will temporarily pay for the tenant in case the tenant will be late with the rent payment. In many cases of higher-end apartments, the guarantor company will be even stricter, like asking for annual income of the tenant, and in case of foreign students who sometimes short on cash, it will be even harder for them to be accepted into the apartment that they like.
All of the problems listed above are related to language problems, since there are still many owner/ management companies that can only speak in Japanese. All properties listed in Beststay.jp are foreign-friendly, which means that the probability of getting accepted will be higher! Not only that, BestStay tries to help foreigners with its multi-language support, our support available in 10 different languages!
