Buying a House in Kamakura and on the Shonan Coast

Kamakura in 2026: what the official land prices say

Kamakura is not a provincial town selling houses off cheap. It is a former military capital of fewer than 180 000 people, wedged between a bay and an amphitheatre of wooded hills, fifty minutes by train from Tokyo. The market is expensive, tight, and above all governed by a stack of rules you will not meet anywhere else in Japan.

The koji chika (公示地価, official land prices published every year by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism) give the exact measure of the land, before any negotiation.

Municipality	Residential land 2026	Equivalent	Year on year	Profile
Kamakura	248,939 ¥/sqm	1,537 €/sqm	+5.0 %	Ancient capital, hills, beach, deep demand
Kamakura, station area	389,555 ¥/sqm	2,405 €/sqm	n/a	Komachi and Yuigahama, the tourist core
Chigasaki	239,200 ¥/sqm	1,477 €/sqm	+4.4 %	Flat, surf culture, larger plots
Fujisawa	229,600 ¥/sqm	1,417 €/sqm	+5.4 %	Enoshima, university, major rail hub
Zushi	216,000 ¥/sqm	1,333 €/sqm	+5.2 %	Sheltered bay, settled residential
Hayama	178,600 ¥/sqm	1,102 €/sqm	+6.8 %	No station, villas, the fastest riser

Two things stand out. First, the whole coast is rising, between 4.4 and 6.8 % in a year, while residential land across Kanagawa prefecture is up around 3.4 %: Shonan is outperforming its own prefecture. Second, the price ranking does not follow the postcard. Hayama, the most sought after villa village on the coast, shows the lowest price per square metre in the table, because it has no railway station and its plots are large. Price per square metre tells you nothing about the entry ticket.

The price of a house, not of the land

On the second hand market, transaction indices put the average detached house in Kamakura at around 55 M¥ in 2025, roughly 343,000 €, down about ten per cent after the 2024 peak. That figure blends 25 M¥ three storey houses near Ofuna with 130 M¥ villas in the hills: treat it as a benchmark, never as a target price.

The working ranges are more useful: 25 to 35 M¥ (154,000 to 216,000 €) for a 1980s or 1990s house needing work in the north of the city, 40 to 60 M¥ (247,000 to 370,000 €) for a sound family home in a residential district, and above 80 M¥ (494,000 €) as soon as a sea view or an old Kamakura address is involved. For national context, our study of what a house costs in Japan gives the same benchmarks country wide.

The six markets inside Kamakura, and what each station changes

Kamakura covers 39 sqkm, yet it behaves like six separate towns, cut off from one another by hills you can only cross through tunnels. Commuting time to Tokyo barely varies. Price and atmosphere do.

Area	Station	To Tokyo	What you are buying
Central Kamakura, Komachi	Kamakura (Yokosuka line)	about 55 min	Historic address, top prices, heavy weekend tourism
Yuigahama, Zaimokuza	Kamakura, Enoden	about 60 min	Beach on foot, tsunami hazard area, low rise houses
Kita-Kamakura, Yamanouchi	Kita-Kamakura	about 50 min	Temples, wooded valleys, heaviest heritage constraints
Ofuna	Ofuna (5 lines)	about 45 min	Best transport to price ratio, station town, little charm
Fukasawa, Kamakurayama	Shonan Monorail	about 65 min	Hillside residential, large plots, car dependent
Koshigoe, Shichirigahama	Enoden	about 70 min	Sea views, slow line, exposed shoreline

Ofuna, the anomaly foreign buyers miss

Ofuna is administratively Kamakura, but nobody associates it with the city's image. It is nevertheless the one point in the area where five lines meet, including the Tokaido and the Shonan Shinjuku, giving direct trains to Tokyo, Shinjuku and Yokohama with no change. A buyer who works in Tokyo and buys to live rather than to admire the view gets mechanically more square metres per yen there than in old Kamakura. It is the same trade off we describe in our piece on buying near a Yamanote line station: the station creates the value, the scenery makes you pay for it.

Hayama, Zushi and the last mile problem

Hayama has no station. You reach it by bus from Zushi, about ten minutes in normal conditions and considerably more on summer weekends when the coast road jams. It is an obvious second home and a demanding primary residence. Zushi, next door, keeps a JR station and a sheltered bay: it is the compromise most families make when they want the sea without giving up the train.

The three laws that decide what you can build

This is where Kamakura stops being an ordinary property market. Three separate regimes stack up on the same plot, and no agent will volunteer them at a first viewing. They do not block the purchase: they determine what you can do with the land, and therefore what it is really worth.

1. The Ancient Capitals Preservation Law

The koto hozon ho (古都保存法, the 1966 special measures law on preserving the historic landscape of ancient capitals) protects Kamakura on the same footing as Kyoto and Nara. Roughly 982 hectares, close to 25 % of the municipal territory, are designated as historic landscape preservation areas. Within that, about 574 hectares, or 14.5 % of the city, form a rekishiteki fudo tokubetsu hozon chiku (歴史的風土特別保存地-ku, special preservation district) where building, felling trees or altering the ground requires prefectural permission that is frequently refused. A plot inside that district can be beautiful and strictly unbuildable.

2. The scenic district ordinance

A fuchi chiku (風致地-ku, scenic protection district) covers about 2,194 hectares in Kamakura, that is 55.5 % of the municipality. More than one plot in two. Kamakura applies only the second category, whose rules are as follows.

Rule in a second category scenic district	Value	What it means on the ground
Maximum building coverage	30 %	On a 200 sqm plot, a 60 sqm footprint at most
Maximum height	15 m	Some sectors are capped at 8 or 10 m
Setback from boundaries	5 m	The house cannot sit against the street or the neighbour
Green space ratio	20 %	40 sqm of planted garden to keep on a 200 sqm plot
Felling trees and bamboo	Permission always required	Including a single tree, including on your own land
Corner plot coverage bonus	Not available	The usual corner relaxation does not apply

A buyer working from the usual Japanese ratios, often 50 or 60 % coverage, is therefore out by a factor of two on buildable footprint. That single misunderstanding is the leading cause of blown renovation budgets in Kamakura.

3. Buried remains, and the calendar they impose

Almost all of old Kamakura is designated maizo bunkazai hozochi (埋蔵文化財包蔵地, a known buried cultural property site): the subsoil may hold structures from the Kamakura period, twelfth to fourteenth century. Article 93 of the bunkazai hogo ho (文化財保護法, Cultural Properties Protection Act) then requires a notification 60 days before works begin. The city answers with one of three instructions: a prior excavation, an officer present during the works, or simple vigilance.

The point rarely written in English, and decisive for a private buyer: when the client is a private individual building their own home, Kamakura's board of education carries out the excavation and bears its cost. A developer, or a commercial use, pays. The delay, however, is yours either way: a few days for a test pit, two to three months for a full excavation, and sometimes more than six months of waiting before it even starts.

Expert tip. Put these three questions to the city hall in writing before the preliminary contract, not after: is the plot in a special preservation district, in a scenic district, in a known buried remains site. The answers are public and free. They are worth more than any listing photograph. Our page on the important matters explanation document sets out what the agent is legally bound to disclose, and what they are not.

Cliff, landslide, tsunami: read the ground before the building

Kamakura is a bowl: a narrow coastal plain closed off by soft sandstone hills riddled with tunnels and yagura (やぐら, medieval rock cut tombs). That geography is the charm of the city and most of its risk.

Tsunami

The city publishes a hazard map based on the prefectural assumption: about 12.5 % of its territory sits in the presumed inundation zone, with a modelled maximum depth reaching 10 metres on the seafront. That covers Yuigahama, Zaimokuza, Koshigoe and the lower valley up towards the shrine. A house in a hazard zone is not unsellable, but it is negotiated down, it is insured at a higher price, and it requires you to know your evacuation route to high ground.

Landslides and the cliff rule

The prefecture classifies a substantial share of Kamakura's slopes as landslide warning areas, and some as special warning areas, under the sediment disaster prevention law. Separately, the Kanagawa prefectural building ordinance (Kanagawa-ken kenchiku kijun jorei, 神奈川県建築kijunjōrei) defines a gake (崖, cliff or steep bank) as ground steeper than 30 degrees, and tightly controls building at its foot or its top: a setback, generally of the order of twice the height of the bank, or an engineered and declared retaining structure.

In practice, a plot backing onto a 6 metre face can require a 12 metre setback, which alone can make it unbuildable. And an existing retaining wall built before current standards will have to be rebuilt at your expense: a six or seven figure yen line item, never priced into the asking price. We set out how to read Japanese hazard data in our guide to natural hazards and Japanese property.

The building itself

The dividing line is the same as everywhere in Japan: the shin taishin (shin-taishin, new seismic standard) in force since June 1981. A house predating it needs an assessment and, often, strengthening. Our article on the 1981 seismic standard explains how to check the real permit date, which is not the construction date shown in the listing.

The most expensive trap: the house you cannot rebuild

This is the mistake that costs the most in Kamakura, and it hides behind the most seductive listings: an old timber house at the end of a lane, fifteen minutes on foot from the Great Buddha, priced clearly below the market.

Article 43 of the kenchiku kijun ho (kenchiku kijun-hō, Building Standards Act) requires every buildable plot to front, over at least 2 metres, a road at least 4 metres wide. Old Kamakura, however, grew along valley paths, private lanes and in some cases flights of steps. A property failing that test is saikenchiku fuka (saikenchiku fuka, not rebuildable): the existing house can be maintained and renovated, but if it burns down or you demolish it, nothing can be built in its place.

Signal in the listing	What to check	Consequence if confirmed
Price clearly below the local market	Width and legal status of the access road	Sharply reduced resale value
Mention of a private lane	Who owns it, written right of passage	Access rights to negotiate and pay for
Access by steps or footpath	No frontage on a vehicle road	Not rebuildable, works carried in by hand
No bank mentioned in the listing	Eligibility for a Japanese mortgage	Cash only, for your buyer too

A non rebuildable property is not automatically a bad buy: it can make sense for long personal use, at a price that reflects it. But it must be bought knowingly, and never at the price of a buildable plot. The point appears on the pre contract disclosure, provided you can read it, and have it translated. We walk through the Japanese listing line by line in our guide to reading a Japanese property listing.

Urbanisation control areas

Kamakura also contains sectors zoned shigaika chosei kuiki (市街化調整-ku域, urbanisation control area), notably around Kita-Kamakura, Ofuna and Fukasawa. Building there, or changing a building's use, is in principle prohibited without a special permit. That is fatal for a tourist accommodation project, and it is town planning information, not agency information.

What a Kamakura house really costs: a worked example

Take a realistic full case: a 1985 detached house, 95 sqm of floor area on a 160 sqm plot, in a residential district of Kamakura fifteen minutes on foot from the station, outside the tsunami hazard zone but inside a scenic district. Asking price: 42 M¥.

Item	Amount in yen	Equivalent	Comment
Purchase price	42,000,000 ¥	259,300 €	Negotiable, especially after three months on the market
Purchase costs, ceiling	2,520,000 ¥	15,600 €	At most 6 % of the price, acquisition tax and fees included
Building survey	60,000 to 120,000 ¥	370 to 740 €	Not compulsory, essential on a 1985 house
Seismic strengthening if required	1,500,000 to 3,000,000 ¥	9,300 to 18,500 €	Depends on the survey, budget it before you offer
Total entry cost	about 46 M¥	about 284,000 €	Excluding comfort renovation

The owner's annual budget

Japanese local tax is calculated on an assessed value, not on the price you paid. For residential land, the base of the kotei shisanzei (kotei shisan-zei, fixed asset tax) is divided by six up to 200 sqm, and by three for the toshi keikakuzei (toshi keikaku-zei, city planning tax). On our case the annual bill lands around 140,000 to 150,000 ¥.

Annual charge	Amount	Equivalent
Fixed asset tax and city planning tax	140,000 to 150,000 ¥	865 to 925 €
Fire and earthquake insurance, timber house	60,000 to 100,000 ¥	370 to 620 €
Maintenance provision, about 1 % of the price	420,000 ¥	2,590 €
Neighbourhood association	4,000 to 12,000 ¥	25 to 74 €
Total	about 650,000 ¥	about 4,000 €

The maintenance provision is not a theoretical precaution. On the coast, salt air, typhoons and humidity wear down joinery, sheet metal and render far faster than inland. Our article on Japanese property tax explains how the base is computed, and the one on damp and mould in a Japanese house shows why this line overruns on the shoreline.

And as a rental?

Assuming a monthly rent of 180,000 ¥, a figure to verify against rental listings in the target street rather than a national average, the gross yield comes out around 4.7 % of the entry cost. After annual charges, management and tax, a realistic net sits between 2.5 and 3 %. A non resident landlord also faces a 20.42 % withholding on rents, explained in our article on rental income tax in Japan for non residents. The immoJapon yield simulator lets you rerun the calculation with your own assumptions.

Bottom line. Kamakura is a market for capital preservation and quality of life, not for yield. Anyone chasing cash flow will do better elsewhere, including forty kilometres away.

One valley further: western Kanagawa at a tenth of the price

The same prefecture, one hour further by train, is a completely different market. The municipalities of western Kanagawa, Hadano, the Ashigara districts, the foothills of Hakone and the Aiko area, sit at the base of the Tanzawa mountains and the Hakone caldera. Detached houses there trade between 2.8 M¥ and 7 M¥, roughly 17,300 to 43,200 €, the price of a garage in Kamakura.

Criterion	Kamakura and the coast	Western Kanagawa
House price	25 to 80 M¥	2.8 to 12 M¥
Commute to Tokyo	45 to 70 min	75 to 110 min
Heritage constraints	Very heavy	Light to none
Resale liquidity	Good	Thin, local market
Natural use	Primary home, capital asset	Second home, renovation project

That is exactly the trade a buyer makes when they want nature, hot springs and mountains without the coastal entry ticket. The immoJapon catalogue currently tracks about forty properties in Kanagawa, overwhelmingly on that side of the prefecture: the houses for sale in Kanagawa can be browsed directly, and the full list of akiya and Japanese houses for sale covers all 46 prefectures. On a tight budget, the Japanese houses under 100,000 euros hub groups the part of the catalogue that matches those amounts.

What about short term rentals?

Kamakura receives millions of visitors a year and the temptation of tourist accommodation is obvious. Two realities bound it. The jutaku shukuhaku jigyo-ho (jūtaku shukuhaku jigyō法, private lodging business act) caps minpaku (minpaku, short term letting of a residence) at 180 nights a year, and the city published a local guideline in December 2025 framing the practice. Above all, land use zoning decides: a large share of Kamakura is in exclusively residential zones, and the urbanisation control sectors are closed to this kind of project. The full mechanics are in our article on the minpaku licence and the 180 day rule, and the unlimited route in the one on the hotel licence for 365 day operation.

Common mistakes and expert advice

The six mistakes that cost the most

• Computing buildable area with standard ratios. In a scenic district it is 30 % coverage and a compulsory 20 % green ratio: the house on your plans does not fit on the plot.
• Signing before asking the city about buried remains. Sixty days of notification, then possibly two to three months of excavation: a project scheduled for spring starts in autumn.
• Mistaking a charming lane for legal access. A road under 4 metres wide and the property becomes non rebuildable, therefore hard to resell and impossible to finance.
• Forgetting the retaining wall. On a sloping plot, rebuilding it can exceed the cost of the interior renovation.
• Believing that buying opens a right to stay. Owning property in Japan grants no visa whatsoever, at any price point. That is the subject of our article on buying as a foreigner without a visa.
• Counting on a Japanese mortgage. Japanese home loans remain in practice reserved for salaried residents of Japan. A non resident buys in cash, as explained in our article on mortgages in Japan for foreigners.

Three habits of a well prepared buyer

1. Ask for the cadastral plan and the planning certificate before you offer. In Kamakura the regulatory record is worth more than the viewing. Three documents rule out 80 % of the bad surprises.
2. Visit on a rainy day. Kamakura's valleys are damp, run off shows, retaining walls weep. An April viewing in fine weather shows nothing. Our method for a remote viewing of a Japanese property lists what to have filmed.
3. Price the exit as carefully as the entry. A constrained house resells to a constrained buyer. Kamakura is liquid for compliant properties and illiquid for the rest, which holds everywhere, as our guide to reselling a property in Japan shows.

In short: buying in Kamakura without bad surprises

Kamakura is one of the few places in Japan where the market rises, demand is structural and supply is capped by law. At 248,939 ¥ per square metre of residential land and around 5 % annual growth, it is no longer a bargain but a capital asset inside a protected setting, fifty minutes from Tokyo. That has a price, and the price holds.

The difficulty is not the price, it is regulatory. More than one plot in two sits in a scenic district, a quarter of the city is in a historic preservation area, almost all of the old centre rests on declared archaeological remains, part of the shoreline is in a tsunami hazard zone and the slopes are in landslide hazard areas. None of this prevents a purchase. All of it has to be checked before signing, never after.

Below 100,000 €, the Shonan coast is the wrong hunting ground: look at the west of the prefecture, or at the 46 prefectures in the immoJapon listings catalogue. For a project in Kamakura itself, preparation matters more than speed, and our guide to buying property in Japan sets out the full procedure step by step. If you would rather delegate the search, the planning checks and the negotiation on the ground, our end to end buying service, from search to handover takes the file on.

Frequently asked questions

Can a foreigner buy a house in Kamakura?

Yes, with no restriction on nationality or residence. Japanese law treats a foreign buyer exactly like a Japanese one, including full freehold ownership of the land. No visa is needed to sign, and a representative can act for you from abroad.

How much does a house in Kamakura cost in 2026?

Expect 25 to 35 M¥ (154,000 to 216,000 €) for an older house needing work, 40 to 60 M¥ (247,000 to 370,000 €) for a sound family home, and over 80 M¥ (494,000 €) for a prime address or a sea view. Residential land trades around 248,939 ¥ per square metre, about 1,537 €.

How long is the commute from Kamakura to Tokyo?

About 55 minutes from Kamakura station to Tokyo on the Yokosuka line with no change, and about 45 minutes from Ofuna, where five lines meet. Yokohama is roughly 25 minutes away. You will get a seat off peak and stand at rush hour.

Do you need permission to cut down a tree on your own land in Kamakura?

Yes inside the scenic protection districts, which cover 55.5 % of the municipality. Felling trees and bamboo requires permission there, even for a single specimen and even on private land. Ground alterations and repainting a facade are also covered.

What is a non rebuildable house and how do you check for one?

It is a property whose plot does not front, over at least 2 metres, a road at least 4 metres wide, as Article 43 of the Building Standards Act requires. The existing house can be renovated, but nothing may be rebuilt after demolition. The status appears in the planning record and in the pre contract disclosure.

Can you run a short term rental in Kamakura?

It is possible but bounded. The minpaku regime caps operation at 180 nights a year, the city issued a local guideline in late 2025, and land use zoning can rule it out entirely, notably in the urbanisation control sectors of Kita-Kamakura, Ofuna and Fukasawa. Check the zoning before you buy.

Does buying in Kamakura give you a Japanese visa?

No. Japan has no property investment visa at any price point. Your right to stay depends on a separate status such as work, spouse or business manager, and owning a home carries no weight in that decision.

Can you get a Japanese mortgage to buy in Kamakura?

In practice not as a non resident. Japanese home loans target salaried residents of Japan, with requirements on job tenure and residence status. A non resident foreign buyer pays cash, which has to be planned into the timetable of the international transfer.