Looking for a rental apartment, found a nice place and spent about an hour filling in a bunch of online forms with all my personal information.
Got an email confirmation saying my application is being analyzed, one of the requirements being:
外国籍の方の場合は敷金1ヶ月増となります。ご了承いただけますでしょうか。”For foreign nationals, the security deposit will increase by one month. Would you be able to understand and accept this?”
Now isn’t this plain discrimination? Is there anything I can do beside telling them to go pound sand?
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10 comments
Search through the subreddit history and you’ll find countless stories of people who couldn’t even apply because they were a foreigner.
This is a sign of improvement, just pay the extra deposit.
You can tell them to pound sand, but they can turn around and tell you to pound your sand elsewhere
Discrimination because they have no legal recourse against runners.
Deposit is money you get back, so don’t worry too much.
> Now isn’t this plain discrimination?
Yep. It’s legal so you’re likely to see it again.
> Is there anything I can do beside telling them to go pound sand?
You have two choices: Pay it and move in, or don’t pay it and look for somewhere else.
It’s a refundable deposit so I’d advise you to pay it and move in. A high percentage of places won’t even consider foreigner tenants at all, so there is no guarantee that you will find somewhere that you like as much that will take you as a tenant.
Ain’t that hard. You can:
Negotiate (unlikely to change anything)
Accept
Refuse
It will be extremely hard to sue or whatever you think is viable in this case. In fact, I think most people would appreciate their honesty. All parties are wasting less time by discussing these “requirements” ahead of time. I get it though, we all wish this wasn’t the case.
Vote with your wallet. Don’t reward bad behaviour.
I think it happens that they have reasons to ask 2 months.
For example just saw a posting for an apartment. Deposit was 1 month if you apply via a (big) company, but 2 month if you apply as an individual (foreign or Japanese alike).
All in all, it feels 2months deposit is the norm now if that makes you feel any better.
Just pay if you really like the place. Just appreciate that they are letting you to apply for the place.
There might have been a previous foreign tenant that screwed them over.
They just want to protect their interests.
I think it depends how much you like the apartment. If it’s a good place and generally the management company seem legit you might want to think twice before making this the hill you want to die on.
In part it’s just prejudice, sure (foreigners are more likely to damage the apartment) but also it reflects the fact that foreign nationals can just up and leave the country without paying for damages.
Ask them why they charge more for foreigners. The answer will be unsatisfactory so you can just say 納得できない and negotiate. If they won’t budge, you can always find a new place or just suck it up and pay. My landlord is an 80 year old woman and she has never batted an eye over me being a foreigner. She never even asked me where I’m from or told me 日本語上手. There are better places OP.
This is because unfortunately there is a history of foreigners running from the country when they can’t handle it or have harder time finding further employment if they lose theirs.
It sucks but it is how it is.