Hello! I wanted to ask here just so I can compare it with what the Realtor says:
I am interested in an apartment building near my son’s school. There are three open units. All apartment units rent are similar, but..The one on the top floor has no key money, deposit, no need for insurance, guarantor, etc. One floor down unit needs Key money, insurance, brokerage firm, guarantor, etc. 1st floor unit no key money or deposit but needs an insurance fee and cleaning money. Any idea why so many differences within the same money. I am apt to go with the cheapest but worry there is a catch…
Thanks!
4 comments
All owned by separate people most likely.
But generally the highest apartments are more sought after and the bottom apartments are least sought after (more risk of clothes stealers, bugs, less privacy, ground noise, etc.)
Should get insurance regardless of what you pick when living in a natural disaster prone area though.
If it’s a åˆ†è² place then every unit is going to have a different owner, and probably managed by a different real estate agency.
If the building is entirely owned by the lending company, then the prices will be pretty uniform and you’d expect to pay according to the room size, layout, and what floor it’s on. Deposit, key money etc. would likely be the same rates for every room.
This exact situation happened to me at one of the places I viewed last year – higher floor unit had no key money or deposit. The real estate agent told me his guess was that the higher floor property had been on the market longer than expected (the story he got from the management company was that someone backed out of the rental application at the last minute close to the move in date, but also iirc the unit had some disadvantages like the view wasnt as nice) so they were reducing the up front costs to try to incentivize someone to move in faster.
You may be making the most common mistake that foreigners make when renting in Japan. You are obsessing over the initial fees and not looking at the whole picture. Probably all three of these will cost about the same over course of your stay.
Places with low initial fees will often have higher than market rent AND extreme exit fees: penalties for checking out early up to one or two month’s rent, no deposit returned, large cleaning fees, etc. Or they will have some unusually conditions that only start to cause problems after you move in. The air conditioners
may not be included as official parts of the apartment and if they break, you may have to buy new ones, etc. Whosoever tries to avoid key money always ends up paying it under another name, the saying goes.