Recently received welcome letter from Tokyo BOE that detailed looking for apartments and if you want to go through their agent or find your own housing.
I would like to find cheap housing but I also don’t have my exact location yet, wondering if I should just go with their agent? What is the usual costs for the guarantor fee?
4 comments
The guarantor company fee is usually half a month’s rent.
You can accept the use of their agent, and then choose not to proceed with their apartments.
Also, if you haven’t already seen these, here are some useful links for Tokyo JETs.
* All Tokyo JETs [https://www.facebook.com/groups/tokyojets](https://www.facebook.com/groups/tokyojets)
* Tokyo Private School JETs [https://www.facebook.com/groups/tokyoprivateschooljets](https://www.facebook.com/groups/tokyoprivateschooljets)
* Incoming Tokyo JETs [https://discord.gg/sFygVChxqy](https://discord.gg/sFygVChxqy)
* TJET [https://discord.gg/HwvqeqDMU7](https://discord.gg/HwvqeqDMU7)
* Wiki https://tokyojet.fandom.com/wiki/Tokyo_JET_Wiki
I would wait until you have your school placement. The Tokyo Islands or other rural like placements are still possible with Tokyo-to. The islands also have BOE housing available anyways.
You should wait until you have your placement, and then let the agent know what you’re looking for and go from there. To be honest, housing is expensive in Tokyo and there’s really nothing you can do about it.
You can find a place that’s reasonable, and live there and you’ll be fine. I ended up getting a flatmate (another JET who works near me) so I split my rent with him and I have a great place on the outskirts of Tokyo that I don’t have to pay a ton for. It has worked out pretty well for us.
You can look for places on your own, but it’s gonna be much much easier if you go with the agent. They’re not great, in fact as far as real estate agents go they kind of suck, but it’s better than nothing. And that means that they are basically on call for the rest of your time living in that apartment, so if you have any issues you can talk to them and they’ll talk to the landlord for you which is really helpful if you don’t have very good Japanese. I’ve never actually had a talk with my landlord. The agency just takes care of everything for me.
You should to wait until you have your placement because that greatly affects how much you’re able to budget for rent and how far away you’d be comfortable living from your school.
I agree with other replies that if you can work with one of the agents it’s probably the easiest, but definitely don’t feel pressured to pick a place you really don’t like – stick to your budget and don’t compromise on things you feel are important. If the agent has a list of properties ready before you’re in Japan like mine did and one catches your eye, ask for video. Mine did and it made it easier to choose since apartments can go off the market very quickly.
Worst case scenario, I know a few people who went with living in a share house/social apartment and then later hired a realtor to help them find a place they really liked a few months in. You would have to find a guarantor in that case I think so their fees may vary.
My experience is a little different from the other replies but just to give another perspective, my upfront costs were the agent’s fee, deposit, and one month’s rent along with some misc. fees like cleaning and the like totaling about 225,000 yen. I paid that through the company/guarantor offered by the Tokyo BoE in the packet. My apartment in a 23-ku area is about 70,000 a month, a part of that cost is the apartment’s maintenance fee that all building occupants pay and my insurance (3500 yen). It’s one month’s rent (no maintenance fee added) for me to renew every two years given directly to my landlord; I don’t have any reoccurring guarantor fees. So those things are highly dependent on the property you are looking at.