I was looking at apartments to move into and am aware of the hefty fees that come with the start of the initial contract.
I found an apartment that was finished being built last month. It is asking for almost as much as one month’s rent as a cleaning fee before moving in.
I get that this is something that people in Japan do for the majority of apartments, but what is there to clean in an apartment that is quite literally under a month old?
Is it just something that is being manipulated to make the landlord more money, or is there something else?
7 comments
It will be used for cleaning when you leave. It’s just paid upfront so you can’t run away and not pay it later.
Its quite common to pay for cleaning fees. Just make sure the contract says that it is paid before moving in and that you are not required to pay after contract termination, so you dont end up paying it twice.
Then you can just forget about cleaning fees forever on that apartment.
Cleaning fees at the beginning of a contract are typical for apartments without key money. The owners know that there is a segment of the population out there (= foreigners new to Japan) that always starts an online search with “no key money” as the essential criteria. So what they do is take a difficult-to-rent (bad location or bad layout) apartments and cut the key money to appeal to foreigners. But then they add it back in as cleaning fees, disinfection, paperwork fees, etc. In other words, you still pay the same amount as the key money, but you sabotaged your search from the beginning by selecting only “no key money” apartments. You are only getting the inferior properties even though your initial fees will be about the same.
Of course there are properties that charge both key money and cleaning fees up front. But those are rare, more expensive than average.
If I’m being generous for a moment… By the time someone signs up for the apartment, it’ll have built up dust, moisture and maybe some creepy crawly freeloaders, so I guess even though the cleaning might not be that intense, they do still give it a wipe down.
I negotiated that no cleaning was needed and succeeded in doing so. If you are not satisfied with the contract, please consult NCAC.
https://www.kokusen.go.jp/ncac_index_e.html
We had cleaning fee+ ac cleaning fee(3) + other cleaning fee. Totaling about 80-95,000 jpy , when we first moved in .
I’m Japanese and I rented a lot do places before. I can confirm it’s WEIRD!!! I’m sure that the person who lived there before you paid the same (probably less) “cleaning fee”too. I’ll suggest having someone Japanese to sign up for your place. It sucks but it is what it is