Vacation Home in Japan: What It Costs to Buy and to Keep

Vacation home in Japan: the short answer

Three facts settle most of the question before you look at a single listing.

• You may buy. Japan places no nationality restriction on freehold property. A non-resident foreigner buys the land and the building outright, in their own name, exactly like a Japanese buyer. The detail of the remote procedure is in our guide to buying a house in Japan without a visa.
• Total purchase costs stay at or below 6 % of the price (acquisition tax, registration, stamp duty, judicial scrivener, agency fee). Anyone quoting you 10 % is padding. The line by line breakdown is in our article on purchase costs in Japan.
• Owning gives you nothing on the immigration side. No visa, no residence permit, not one extra day of stay. A second home in Japan is visited on the same ninety day visa waiver as any tourist, if your nationality qualifies.

The fourth fact is the one this article exists for: a vacation home is bought once and paid for every year. Property tax, city planning tax, insurance, utilities kept alive out of season, a gardener, a caretaker, sometimes a private estate fee, sometimes a municipal second home tax. On a house bought at 9,500,000 yen (about $60,900), a realistic annual bill sits between 240,000 and 360,000 yen ($1,540 to $2,310). That is 2.5 % to 3.8 % of the purchase price, recurring, whether you come or not.

The conclusion is not "do not buy". It is that the cheap part of the deal is the purchase, and the decision has to be made on the holding cost and on the location.

What a besso is, and the four markets you can buy into

The Japanese word is bessō (別荘, holiday house). It carries a specific social history: the resort districts built for Tokyo and Osaka families from the Meiji era onward, then massively extended during the bubble years. Two consequences matter to a buyer today.

First, much of the stock is forty to fifty years old, built as a summer house rather than a year round home, which means thin insulation, single glazing and pipes that freeze. Our article on insulation in Japanese houses explains what that costs to fix.

Second, a large share sits inside a bessōchi (別荘地, private resort estate), where roads, water supply and sometimes sewerage belong to a management company that bills an annual fee for as long as you own the lot. That fee is contractual, it survives the sale, and it is the single most underestimated line in the budget.

The four markets, compared

Market	Typical places	Access from Tokyo	Entry ticket observed	What defines it
Onsen belt on the Shinkansen	Atami, Ito, Yugawara, Hakone	40 to 90 min	Houses from about 3,000,000 yen ($19,200); resort flats lower still	The most liquid market, day trip distance, but high building charges and a municipal second home tax in Atami
Highland and forest	Karuizawa, Nagano, Yamanashi, lake Kawaguchi	70 to 120 min	Karuizawa premium; rural Nagano from about 3,000,000 yen ($19,200)	Private estates with annual fees, real winter, water drained from November to April
International snow	Niseko, Hakuba centre, Furano	Flight plus transfer	Often above 30,000,000 yen ($192,300)	Priced in foreign currency, professional short let competition, genuine rental yield
Coast and heritage city	Kamakura and Shonan, south Izu, Kyoto machiya	60 min or more	Kamakura expensive; Shimoda and rural coast far cheaper	Usable all year, strictest short let rules, highest resale demand

Each of these maps onto something you can browse today. Atami has its own page of listings in our Atami property listings, the highland market sits mostly in Nagano prefecture listings, and the heritage option is the townhouse: see machiya for sale. For the snow markets specifically, read our analysis of ski resort property in Niseko and Hakuba before assuming the yields travel.

The one criterion that outranks the view

A vacation home that needs a car for every loaf of bread stops being used after three years, and a house that stops being used becomes unsellable. The test is the same one we apply to every akiya (akiya, vacant house): a station within twenty to thirty minutes and a shop open year round. A resort that empties in October fails it. Always check what is open in winter, not in August.

What it costs to buy: price bands and the 6 % ceiling

Japanese resort property is cheap in a way that surprises buyers from Europe or North America, for a structural reason: a wooden house is an asset that depreciates to near zero over twenty two years of tax life, so what you are really buying is the land plus a usable shell. Our article on why Japanese houses lose their value explains the mechanism, and it is exactly why a forty year old summer house can trade at the price of a new car.

Product	Observed price	In dollars	Honest caveat
Resort flat (rizōto manshon, リゾートmansion (condominium)), Atami or Yugawara	1,500,000 to 6,000,000 yen	$9,600 to $38,500	Monthly charges often exceed what the flat is worth over ten years. See the warning below.
Detached summer house to renovate, onsen belt or rural highland	3,000,000 to 9,000,000 yen	$19,200 to $57,700	Budget 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 yen of works before first use.
Habitable detached house, good access	9,000,000 to 20,000,000 yen	$57,700 to $128,200	The realistic bracket for something usable from day one.
Kyoto machiya, restored	30,000,000 yen and up	$192,300 and up	A heritage asset, not a cheap holiday house.
Niseko or Hakuba centre	30,000,000 yen and up	$192,300 and up	Foreign currency market, compare against Europe, not against Japan.

The 6 % that gets added at signing

On top of the price, count no more than 6 % in total: real estate acquisition tax, registration tax, stamp duty, the shihō shoshi (shihō shoshi, judicial scrivener) fee and the agency commission. On our 9,500,000 yen example that is about 570,000 yen ($3,650), for an all in entry of 10,070,000 yen ($64,550). You can model any property in seconds with our Japan property calculator.

Financing: assume cash

A Japanese mortgage requires residence in Japan and a Japanese salaried income. A non-resident buying a second home will not get one, whatever a portal suggests. In practice a vacation home in Japan is a cash purchase, which is precisely why the low entry ticket matters so much: the whole market is accessible to a buyer who could not borrow a yen. Our article on mortgages in Japan for foreigners sets out the narrow exceptions.

The annual bill nobody shows you

This is where second homes are won and lost. A listing shows a price; it never shows the standing order. Here is the full structure, with realistic ranges for a detached house of about 90 sqm.

Annual item	Typical amount	In dollars	Applies to
Property tax (kotei shisan zei, kotei shisan-zei)	1.4 % of assessed value	often 30,000 to 80,000 yen ($190 to $510)	Everyone. Assessed value is far below market price.
City planning tax (toshi keikaku zei, toshi keikaku-zei)	up to 0.3 % of assessed value	0 to 20,000 yen ($0 to $130)	Urbanised zones only.
Municipal second home tax	650 yen per sqm in Atami	$375 on 90 sqm	Non-residents owning in Atami. Detail in the next section.
Private estate management fee (bessōchi kanrihi)	30,000 to 150,000 yen	$190 to $960	Any lot inside a private resort estate. Contractual, perpetual.
Building charges and sinking fund, flats	15,000 to 40,000 yen per month	$1,150 to $3,080 per year	Resort flats. The decisive line.
Insurance, fire plus earthquake	30,000 to 60,000 yen	$190 to $385	Everyone. Earthquake cover is a separate rider.
Utilities kept connected out of season	30,000 to 60,000 yen	$190 to $385	Everyone. A disconnected house deteriorates faster.
Caretaking, garden, snow, airing	60,000 to 200,000 yen	$385 to $1,280	Anyone not living within driving distance.
Septic tank servicing (jōkasō, 浄化槽)	40,000 to 70,000 yen	$260 to $450	Rural properties with no mains sewerage.

Two of these deserve a paragraph of their own.

The resort flat trap

A flat in Atami advertised at 1,500,000 yen ($9,600) with monthly charges of 35,000 yen costs 420,000 yen a year ($2,690) to hold. Over ten years you will have paid 4,200,000 yen in charges on a 1,500,000 yen asset, and the charges rise as the building ages and the sinking fund is topped up. The price is low because the charges are high, not despite it. Read the kanri kumiai (kanri kumiai, owners association) accounts and the repair plan before anything else; our article on building charges in Japan shows what to look for.

The private estate fee

In a bessōchi, the road you drive on and the water you drink may belong to a company. The fee is not a tax and no municipality will arbitrate it: it is a private contract attached to the lot, and it continues whether the estate still maintains anything or not. Ask for three years of invoices and the list of what the fee actually covers, in writing, before you sign. Also ask whether the water supply is seasonal, because many highland estates shut it off from November to April.

Our simulator lets you load these lines against a real listing instead of guessing.

Three taxes that target second homes specifically

Most foreign buyers know about property tax. Almost none know that Japan has begun taxing the fact of not living in a house. Three mechanisms matter, and they are the reason this article exists.

1. Atami taxes villas by the square metre

The city of Atami has levied a bessō tō shoyū zei (別荘等所有税, villa ownership tax) since 1976, a local tax outside the national framework. The rate is 650 yen per square metre of total floor area, per year. It is owed by owners who are not registered residents of the city, and in a condominium the shared areas are apportioned into your taxable floor area. On a 90 sqm house that is 58,500 yen a year ($375); on a 130 sqm house, 84,500 yen ($540). Regular monthly use does not exempt you: what exempts you is being on the resident register.

The point is not that Atami is expensive, it is that a municipality may create a tax aimed precisely at you. Check the local tax page of the city you are buying in, not only the prefecture.

2. Kyoto will tax non-occupied housing from fiscal 2030

Kyoto has adopted a hikyojū jūtaku rikatsuyō sokushin zei (非居住jūtaku利活用促進税, tax to promote the use of non-occupied housing), explicitly covering second homes and holiday houses inside the urbanisation zone. Start of assessment was pushed back a year and is now planned for fiscal 2030, on the situation as at 1 January of that year.

The published design adds, on top of ordinary property tax, 0.7 % of the assessed building value plus 0.15 % to 0.6 % on the corresponding land share depending on that building value. Buildings assessed under 300,000 yen ($1,920) are exempt for the first five years, then the threshold rises to 1,000,000 yen ($6,400). Rented or commercially used property, designated heritage buildings and genuinely temporary absences are outside the scope.

For a restored Kyoto machiya kept empty eleven months a year, that is a new recurring line. It is also a signal: Kyoto is the first large city to do this, and the housing shortage argument that justified it applies elsewhere. If you want a machiya, plan to use it or to let it legally. Our article on buying a machiya in Kyoto covers the rest of that market.

3. A neglected house can lose its land tax relief

Property tax on residential land is assessed on one sixth of the value for the first 200 sqm, which is why Japanese property tax bills look so low. Since the vacant housing act was revised, in force on 13 December 2023, that relief can be withdrawn not only from a dangerous building (tokutei akiya tō, tokutei akiya等) but from a merely badly maintained one (kanri fuzen akiya tō, kanri fuzen akiya等): broken windows, rotting cladding, an overgrown plot, rubbish. Withdrawal typically multiplies the land portion of the bill by around three.

A vacation home visited twice a year, with nobody cutting the grass, is exactly the profile a municipal inspection notices. Budgeting a caretaker is not a comfort, it is tax planning. Our article on property tax in Japan details the calculation.

Renting it out when you are not there

Letting the house for the nine or ten months you are away is the obvious answer, and it works: Japan received a record 42.7 million visitors in 2025, and resort towns are where the shortage of good accommodation is sharpest. But three permissions stand between you and the first booking, and none of them is automatic.

The licence decides everything

Route	Nights allowed	What it demands	Fits a vacation home?
Private lodging notification (minpaku, minpaku)	180 per calendar year	Notification, safety equipment, guest register, a contactable manager	Yes, and it leaves you half the year for your own use
Simple lodging licence (kan'i shukusho, kan'i shukusho)	365	Full hotel law licence, zoning compliance, front desk rules	Only if you are running a business, not a second home
Special zone lodging (tokku minpaku)	365, minimum stay rules	Designated zones only, such as parts of Osaka	Rarely relevant in resort areas

The 180 night cap is usually framed as a constraint. For a second home it is the opposite: it matches the use pattern you actually want. Our article on the 180 day minpaku licence walks through the notification, and the real operating cost of an Airbnb in Japan gives the expense lines.

Two veto powers above the licence

A national licence is worthless if something below it says no. Check both, in writing, before you buy:

• The condominium bylaws. A majority of resort buildings have amended their kanri kiyaku (kanri kiyaku, building rules) to prohibit short lets outright. No licence overrides them.
• The estate covenants and local bylaws. Private resort estates frequently ban commercial use of a lot. Separately, municipalities add their own restrictions: Kyoto in particular imposes strict conditions in residential zones, which our article on Airbnb regulation in Kyoto sets out.

What to expect financially

Do not model a resort property at city occupancy. Demand is seasonal, and the season is short: snow in Hakuba, August on the Izu coast, autumn foliage in Nagano. A realistic plan books 50 to 80 nights of the 180 allowed, at a rate well above a city flat. Against that, count 15 % platform commission, about 20 % of gross for local management, cleaning, consumables and the energy you cannot avoid. The next section puts numbers on it.

Worked example: a 90 sqm house in Atami at 9,500,000 yen

A 1980s detached house of 90 sqm on a 200 sqm plot, fifteen minutes on foot from a Shinkansen station forty nine minutes from Tokyo, habitable but tired. All figures at the reference rate used when this article was written, 156 yen to the dollar.

Year one, getting in

Line	Yen	Dollars
Price	9,500,000	$60,900
Purchase costs, 6 % ceiling	570,000	$3,650
Works: water heater, insulation of two rooms, paint, safety kit	2,000,000	$12,800
Total capital in	12,070,000	$77,350

Every year after that

Line	Yen per year	Dollars
Property tax and city planning tax (assessed value well below price)	55,000	$353
Atami villa ownership tax, 90 sqm at 650 yen	58,500	$375
Insurance, fire and earthquake	45,000	$289
Utilities kept on, garden, airing, small repairs	80,000	$513
Holding cost, self managed	238,500	$1,530
Caretaker and remote management, if you live abroad	120,000	$770
Holding cost, managed from abroad	358,500	$2,300

That managed figure is 3.8 % of the purchase price, every year. Hold it for ten years without letting it and you will have spent 3,585,000 yen ($22,980), a third of the price again.

The same house, let 60 nights under a minpaku notification

Line	Yen per year	Dollars
60 nights at 18,000 yen	1,080,000	$6,925
Platform commission, 15 %	-162,000	-$1,040
Local management, 20 % of gross	-216,000	-$1,385
Cleaning, net of guest charges	-120,000	-$770
Consumables and extra energy	-100,000	-$640
Operating surplus	482,000	$3,090
Less holding cost, managed	-358,500	-$2,300
Net, before Japanese income tax	123,500	$790

Read that honestly: sixty let nights turn a 3.8 % annual drain into roughly break even, and you still have 120 nights a year for yourself. That is the real case for letting a second home in Japan. It is not a yield play. Anyone promising you 8 % net on a resort house with a 180 night ceiling is adding numbers you will not collect, and the rental income is taxable in Japan through a kakutei shinkoku return, with a tax representative required if you live abroad.

Change any assumption on your own target property with our yield simulator, and browse what is actually for sale under this budget in Japanese houses under $100,000.

Seven mistakes that turn a vacation home into a liability

1. Buying the view and ignoring the station. A house thirty minutes by car from everything is used twice, then never. Liquidity on resale follows the same rule: a station within twenty to thirty minutes and a shop open all year.
2. Not reading the private estate contract. The annual fee, what it covers, whether water runs in winter, who owns the access road. All of it is contractual, all of it survives the sale, none of it is negotiable afterwards.
3. Treating a resort flat as the cheap option. Monthly charges of 35,000 yen on a 1,500,000 yen flat cost more than the flat within four years. Always ask for the sinking fund balance and the long term repair plan.
4. Assuming you can let it. Building bylaws and estate covenants outrank any national licence. Get the prohibition, or the absence of one, in writing before signing.
5. Forgetting the municipal tax layer. Atami charges 650 yen per sqm to non-resident owners. Kyoto will tax non-occupied housing from fiscal 2030. Read the city's own tax page.
6. Leaving it unmaintained. Since December 2023 a badly maintained house can lose the residential land relief, which roughly triples the land portion of the tax bill. A caretaker costs less than the lost relief.
7. Expecting the purchase to help with immigration. It does not, in any way, and no structure changes that. If residence is the goal, the route is a status of residence, not a deed. See retiring in Japan for the six routes that actually exist.

One addition that is not a mistake but a blind spot: natural hazard exposure. Resort land is often steep, coastal or at the foot of a slope, which is precisely where landslide and tsunami zoning bites. Check it before the offer, not after, with our article on natural hazards and Japanese property.

Conclusion: buy the location, budget the holding cost

A vacation home in Japan is one of the few places in the developed world where a foreign buyer with no local income and no mortgage can own a house near a major city for the price of a car. That part is real, and our catalogue of akiya and houses for sale in Japan shows it every day.

The discipline is on the other side of the ledger. Decide the location on the winter test, not the August one. Get the private estate fee and the building charges in writing. Read the city's tax page, not just the national rules. Budget a caretaker, both to protect the house and to protect the land tax relief. And if you intend to let the property when you are away, confirm the bylaws before you confirm the licence.

Done that way, sixty let nights a year cover the holding cost and the house stays yours for the other three hundred. Done the other way, a 9,500,000 yen purchase quietly costs you 360,000 yen a year to keep an asset you visit twice. If you want that arithmetic checked against a specific listing before you commit, that is exactly what our end to end support package is for, and the first exchange is in writing, with no commitment. The full purchase process is in our guide to buying a house in Japan.

Frequently asked questions

Can a foreigner buy a vacation home in Japan?

Yes, with no restriction on nationality and no need for a visa or residence permit. A non-resident buys land and building freehold, in their own name, and can complete the whole purchase remotely through a power of attorney and a judicial scrivener.

Does buying a vacation home in Japan give you a visa?

No. Property ownership grants no status of residence and not one extra day of stay. You visit your own house on the same short stay visa waiver as any tourist, if your nationality qualifies. Residence requires a separate immigration route.

How much does it cost to keep a vacation home in Japan each year?

On a detached house of about 90 sqm, expect 240,000 to 360,000 yen a year ($1,540 to $2,310) covering property tax, insurance, utilities kept connected, caretaking and any municipal second home tax. On a resort flat, building charges alone often run 180,000 to 480,000 yen a year.

Is there a second home tax in Japan?

There is no national one, but municipalities may create their own. Atami has taxed villa ownership since 1976 at 650 yen per square metre of floor area per year, payable by owners who are not registered residents. Kyoto plans to tax non-occupied housing, second homes included, from fiscal 2030.

Can I rent out my Japanese vacation home on Airbnb while I am away?

Usually yes, up to 180 nights a year under a minpaku notification, which leaves the rest of the year for your own use. But condominium bylaws and private estate covenants can prohibit short lets outright and they override the licence, so check both in writing before buying.

Where is the cheapest vacation home market near Tokyo?

The onsen belt on the Tokaido Shinkansen, around Atami, Ito and Yugawara, where tired detached houses start around 3,000,000 yen and resort flats lower still. The low prices reflect high building charges and an ageing stock, so read the accounts before the listing.

Can I get a mortgage for a second home in Japan?

Realistically no. Japanese mortgages require residence in Japan and Japanese salaried income, and second homes are the least financed category of all. Plan a cash purchase, which the price level makes feasible.

Is a resort flat a good way to buy cheap?

Only if the charges are low, which is rare. A flat at 1,500,000 yen with monthly charges of 35,000 yen costs 420,000 yen a year to hold, more than its own price within four years. Always obtain the owners association accounts, the sinking fund balance and the long term repair plan.