Japanese Real Estate Websites: How to Search SUUMO

The four circuits where Japanese listings actually live

A foreign buyer types "houses for sale in Japan" into Google and lands on three or four English-language sites showing a few hundred properties. The real Japanese market carries several hundred thousand active sale listings. The gap is not a secret: it is structural, because listing information is split across four separate circuits.

The map to have in mind before you start

Circuit	Examples	What you find there	Reachable from abroad
Consumer portals	SUUMO, at home, LIFULL HOME'S	Most urban and suburban properties for sale, published by agencies	Yes, but in Japanese
Professional database	reinzu (レインズ, REINS)	Properties under exclusive mandate, often before any public advert	No: licensed agents only
Vacant-house banks	Municipal banks, national portal	Rural houses, frequently outside the agency circuit altogether	Yes, registration sometimes required
Agency sites and off-market	The agency's own site, mikōkai bukken (未公開物件, unpublished property)	First-look listings, properties never advertised at all	Partly

Remember the sequence: a property starts at an agency, enters REINS if the mandate requires it, and only then surfaces on a consumer portal. By the time you see it on SUUMO, it has already circulated among professionals for several days. That is exactly why our catalogue of akiya and Japanese houses aggregates several sources instead of mirroring a single portal.

A portal is not a seller

None of these sites holds stock. They are advertising platforms: the agency pays to display a mandate, and it is the agency, holder of a takuchi tatemono torihikigyō (宅地building取引業, real estate brokerage) licence, that handles the sale. The contact button therefore sends a message to a local professional, not to the owner, and it puts you in a relationship where the agency represents the seller first. We unpack that balance of power in our article on how a Japanese real estate agency works.

SUUMO, at home and LIFULL HOME'S: which one for which job

The three portals look alike from a distance and behave very differently in practice. None of them is complete on its own: a property may sit on one and not on the other two, depending on the advertising contracts of the agency holding it.

Portal	Publisher	Strength	Blind spot
SUUMO	Recruit	Volume and brand recall: the national default, very deep in urban and suburban areas, detailed listing pages	Sales side entirely in Japanese, filters designed for a resident
at home	At Home Co., Ltd.	Strong coverage of small independent agencies and rural areas, co-operator of the national vacant-house portal	Plainer listing pages, few photos on rural properties
LIFULL HOME'S	LIFULL Co., Ltd.	Rich search engine (maps, schools, surroundings), also runs a national akiya bank	Translated versions, where they exist, mostly cover rentals

Expert tip: always cross two portals, never trust one

An ippan baikai (ippan媒介, non-exclusive mandate) lets a seller hand the same property to several agencies at once. Each publishes separately, with its own photos and sometimes a different description. An exclusive mandate, by contrast, is advertised by one agency only, often on a single portal. Searching one site therefore means ignoring a random slice of the market. The working method: run the same query on SUUMO and on at home, then match results by address and floor area, never by title.

English-language sites are not a fourth circuit

The English platforms aimed at foreign buyers mostly resell existing mandates and add no property to the market. They help with language, rarely with coverage. That is precisely why we built a translated catalogue fed by the Japanese sources themselves, with a yield simulator and price map to read the numbers behind each listing.

Searching in Japanese without speaking Japanese

Most failed searches come down to three words. The first separates renting from buying, the second names the property type, the third states the price. Once you know those three, a browser with automatic translation is enough to work any portal.

Romaji	Japanese	Meaning	Why it matters
baibai	売買	Buying and selling	The tab you want. Without it you are browsing rentals
chintai	rental	Renting	The tab to avoid: it is the one that opens by default
chūko ikkodate	中古一戸建て	Second-hand detached house	The category holding almost every akiya
shinchiku	新築	Newly built	Untick it if you are after older stock
chūko manshon	中古mansion (condominium)	Second-hand concrete apartment	The urban market, monthly building charges included
tochi	tochi	Bare land	A separate category, never mixed with houses
kakaku	価格	Price	Quoted in man'en (万円), units of 10,000 yen
madori	madori (floor plan)	Room layout	The familiar 3LDK or 2DK code
chikunen	chikunen	Year built	Decisive for the earthquake code that applies
toho	walk	On foot	Minutes calculated at 80 metres per minute
shōdanchū	商談中	Under negotiation	The property is no longer really available
seiyakuzumi	成約済	Sold	The advert often stays online for weeks

The man'en trap

A price shown as "480万円" is neither 480 yen nor 480,000 yen: it is 480 times 10,000, so 4,800,000 ¥ (roughly 29,600 € at the 162 ¥/€ rate used when this article was written). Three zeros are all it takes to turn a bargain into a mirage, or the other way round. The full anatomy of a listing page, floor plans and area units included, is in our guide to reading a Japanese property listing, with the terminology in our Japanese real estate glossary.

A walking minute is not a minute

Advertised toho time is calculated by regulation at 80 metres per minute, on the flat, ignoring traffic lights, level crossings and gradient. In a hill town like Kanazawa, or on a Yokohama slope, "toho 15 minutes" takes twenty-five. For a rural akiya the real question is not the walk anyway: it is whether there is a served station at all. That single factor drives resale value far more than the condition of the building.

What a Japanese portal never shows you

A portal shows what an agency decided to put there, when it decided to put it there. Four blind spots explain most of the frustration foreign buyers feel.

REINS, the database the public cannot see

When a seller signs an exclusive mandate, the agency must register the property in reinzu (REINS), the network of distribution bodies designated by the ministry: within five business days for a full exclusive mandate (senzoku sennin baikai, 専属専任媒介), within seven business days for a standard exclusive mandate (sennin baikai, 専任媒介). A non-exclusive mandate carries no such duty. In other words, a property can be known to every professional in the prefecture for a week before a single public advert exists. The public only reaches the statistical shop window of REINS, which publishes past transaction prices, not properties for sale.

Off-market properties

Mikōkai bukken (未公開物件, unpublished properties) are passed hand to hand to buyers the agency already knows: repeat investors, neighbours, local companies. They are not illegal, they are simply invisible. A buyer who talks to nobody on the ground will never see one, however many hours are spent on portals.

Duplicates, ghost listings and bait listings

• Duplicates. Under a non-exclusive mandate the same house appears at three agencies, with three sets of photos and sometimes three different titles. Always match by address, land area and year built.
• Ghost listings. A property marked shōdanchū or seiyakuzumi stays online because it brings enquiries. The note sits in small type, usually at the top of the page.
• Bait listings. Otori bukken (おとり物件, bait properties), advertised to attract calls then declared "just sold", are banned by the fair competition code governing property advertising. They persist anyway, mostly at the cheap end.

Nothing on hazard, nothing on the neighbourhood

A Japanese listing describes a building, not its surroundings. Zoning, flood exposure, landslide warning areas and the town's projected population in ten years do not appear. All of it exists, publicly and free of charge, but it lives elsewhere: see our article on natural hazards and Japanese property.

The rural stock that reaches no portal at all

In the countryside a large share of empty houses never passes through an agency at all. The statutory commission on a 3,000,000 ¥ property (around 18,500 €) does not cover an agent's travel, an inspection and the inheritance paperwork. So the house stays empty, or it ends up in a municipal vacant-house bank.

How the akiya bank circuit works

Every municipality runs its own list, with its own interface and its own conditions. The ministry pushed part of those lists towards a national portal, whose operation was entrusted to two private portal companies (at home and LIFULL HOME'S) under a pilot scheme. The result is uneven: some towns publish everything, others require prior registration, an interview, even a commitment to live in the house. Every step is broken down in our guide to the akiya bank system.

Why we aggregate instead of pointing at a portal

A non-resident buyer asked to monitor three national portals, forty-seven prefectural ones and hundreds of municipal pages gives up within a fortnight. That is the point of our catalogue: more than 5,000 listings tracked across 46 prefectures, refreshed nightly, prices converted and pin locations verified against the ground. The most used entry points are Japanese houses under 50,000 € and, for traditional urban housing, machiya for sale.

Checking a price against free official data

A portal shows an asking price, never a market price. Before writing to an agency, three public databases will tell you whether the number stands up. They are free, they are in Japanese, and they beat any commercial valuation.

Source	Publisher	What it gives	Limitation
fudōsan jōhō raiburari (Fudōsan Jōhō Library, real estate information library)	Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT)	Actual registered transactions by municipality and property type, layered over hazard and zoning maps	Quarters published several months in arrears
REINS Market Information	Designated distribution bodies	Transaction prices for houses and apartments sold through professionals	Aggregated, no exact address
rosenka (rosenka, street-frontage tax value)	National Tax Agency (NTA)	Tax value per square metre, street by street, published every year	A tax base, lower than the market price

The habit that stops you overpaying

Take the asking price, divide by floor area, and compare with the price per square metre of real transactions in the same municipality for the same property type. Twenty per cent above is negotiable; twice the local level almost always means a property renovated for short-term rental, or a category error. That is exactly the calculation our Premium analysis performs on every listing, comparing the price to ministry-registered transactions where the municipality is covered, and to the catalogue where it is not.

Worked example: from the listing you spotted to the real budget

You spot a second-hand detached house advertised at "1,200万円", that is 12,000,000 ¥ (about 74,100 €), toho 12 minutes from a station, built in 1998, 95 m² of floor area on 180 m² of land. Here is what the listing does not price.

Item	Amount in yen	Equivalent	Note
Asking price	12,000,000 ¥	74,074 €	A negotiating base, not a fixed price
Agency commission (statutory cap, tax included)	462,000 ¥	2,852 €	3 % of the price plus 60,000 ¥, plus consumption tax
Registration tax (tōroku menkyozei, tōroku menkyo-zei)	115,000 ¥	710 €	Based on the assessed value, well below the price paid
Stamp duty (inshizei, inshi-zei), reduced rate	10,000 ¥	62 €	Fixed scale by contract price band
Shihō shoshi fees (shihō shoshi, registration lawyer)	60,000 ¥	370 €	Recording the transfer of ownership
Acquisition tax (fudōsan shutokuzei, fudōsan shutoku-zei)	0 to 20,000 ¥	0 to 123 €	Often cancelled by residential allowances
Total purchase costs	647,000 to 667,000 ¥	3,994 to 4,117 €	That is 5.4 % to 5.6 % of the price

The rule to remember: purchase costs in Japan stay under 6 % of the price, with agency commission accounting for two thirds of that. The line-by-line breakdown is in our article on purchase costs when buying property in Japan.

The special case of very cheap properties

Since 1 July 2024, the rules allow a derogatory fee on vacant properties priced at 8,000,000 ¥ or below: up to 300,000 ¥ before tax, so 330,000 ¥ including tax, provided the agency explains it and obtains agreement before the mandate is signed. This is not a percentage, it is a cap expressed in yen, designed to make small rural files viable to handle. In practice: on a 3,000,000 ¥ akiya the commission is no longer 155,000 ¥ but can reach 330,000 ¥. The absolute amount stays modest, but it belongs in your budget from the first calculation.

What the portal will not tell you either

• A 1998 house post-dates the 1981 earthquake code, which changes everything about insurance and resale: see the shin-taishin earthquake standard.
• No Japanese bank lends to a non-resident: a mortgage assumes you live in Japan and are salaried there. Otherwise the purchase is a cash purchase.
• Buying this house grants no right of residence whatsoever. Ownership and visas are unrelated subjects.

The seven mistakes that cost the most

1. Searching rentals without realising it. Portals open on chintai. If the prices hover around 80,000, you are looking at monthly rents, not sale prices.
2. Mistaking English-language sites for the market. They translate a fraction of the stock. The real market is in Japanese, and browser translation is more than enough to navigate it.
3. Writing in English to a small rural agency. Many simply do not reply, not out of disdain but out of fear of misunderstanding a legal commitment. A short, polite message in Japanese quoting the property reference transforms the response rate.
4. Reading the walking time literally. The regulated calculation ignores hills, traffic lights and level crossings.
5. Overlooking the under-negotiation note. A viewing arranged from Europe on a property already under offer is a week lost.
6. Assuming the portal represents you. The agency advertising the property acts for the seller. Having the property checked by a third party before you make an offer is not distrust, it is professional practice: our article on viewing a Japanese property remotely sets out the procedure.
7. Buying far from everything because it is cheaper. What separates a good akiya from a bad one is neither price nor the state of the building: it is access to a station and to shops. A house 20 minutes from a working station rents and resells; the same house 50 minutes away does not.

These seven checks are exactly the ones we run before recommending a property under our buying support service, and they run through the full buying guide.

In short: a portal finds, it does not buy

A Japanese real estate website is an excellent scouting tool and a poor decision tool. It shows what an agency chose to publish, in a language you do not read, without hazard context, without market pricing and without the real timetable of the sale. Use it to grasp the orders of magnitude in a given town, not to make the call.

The method that works has four steps: cross at least two portals, check the price against real transactions published by the ministry, search vacant-house banks separately for rural stock, and never make an offer without having the property inspected on the ground. To skip the weeks of groundwork, our catalogue of translated Japanese listings already does the aggregation, and the first written exchange, with no commitment exists precisely to establish whether your project holds together before you commit a budget to it.

Frequently asked questions

Is SUUMO available in English?

Not for sales: the buying side of SUUMO is published in Japanese only. Browser translation works perfectly well for browsing and filtering, provided you know the handful of Japanese search terms that drive the filters.

Can you buy directly on a Japanese real estate website?

No. Portals are advertising platforms: they forward your message to the agency holding the mandate, which handles the sale. The transaction itself must go through a licensed professional, who drafts and reads out the explanation of important matters before signing.

Why does the same house appear several times with different photos?

Because the seller signed a non-exclusive mandate allowing several agencies to market the property at once. Each publishes its own advert. Match by address, land area and year built rather than by title to spot the duplicates.

What does a price quoted in man'en mean?

One man'en equals 10,000 yen. A price of 480 man'en therefore means 4,800,000 ¥, roughly 29,600 €. It is the standard unit on every Japanese portal, and the single most common reading error among foreign buyers.

Do Japanese agencies reply to foreign buyers?

Large urban agencies often do. Small rural offices respond far better to a short, polite message in Japanese quoting the property reference and a proposed viewing date. A first approach in English very often goes unanswered.

Where do you find empty houses that are on no portal?

In the vacant-house banks run by municipalities, and in the national portal that aggregates part of them. These properties escape the portals because the commission they generate does not cover an agency's work.

Does a Japanese portal show natural hazard exposure?

Almost never. Flooding, landslide, liquefaction and zoning are consulted separately, through the ministry's real estate information library and the municipal hazard maps, both public and free.

Does buying a property found on a Japanese portal grant a visa?

No. Property ownership creates no right of residence in Japan, whatever the amount invested. A visa depends on an activity status or a family situation, never on a purchase.