Japan Home-Buying Cost is a free, English-language tool for foreign residents working out what buying a home in Japan actually costs. It estimates the full 諸費用 (shohiyō) — the transaction-cost stack on top of the purchase price: the agent fee, registration and acquisition taxes, stamp duty, the judicial scrivener, loan fees, and insurance.
Our scope — deliberately narrow
This tool does one thing: transaction-cost math on stable statutory formulas. It never tells you what you can afford, never recommends buying or renting, and keeps loan-eligibility content qualitative. That's a deliberate limit — affordability and the buy decision are yours and your professionals', and the transaction-cost math is the safe, deterministic part we can get right.
How we source the numbers
Every tax rate and 軽減措置 (tax reduction) comes from 国税庁 / 総務省 / 法務局 sources and is encoded with its statutory expiry date. When a reduction lapses and isn't renewed, the tool falls back to the standard rate and says so — because these reductions are revised on a schedule, usually each April. The taxes are charged on the 固定資産税評価額 (assessed value), which we estimate from your price using stated heuristics, so the tax lines are approximate; the scrivener and insurance lines are market ranges.
What we will and won't monetise
The only commercial links we carry are owner-occupier mortgage-comparison services, and only on the loan-fee lines and the home-loan guide. We have a hard rule against real-estate investment solicitation — investment seminars, "investment loans", rental-yield pitches — no matter what they pay. Our audience is families buying a place to live, and investment-solicitation referral is the predatory corner of this market. It has no place here. This is an independent project, not affiliated with any agency, bank, or government body, and it is informational only, not legal, tax, or financial advice.
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