We have six dogs.
Yeah. I know. TLDR we had an intact male, adopted two rescue "spayed" females, and found out the hard way that they were NOT spayed, they were simply scarred from prior C sections. So, we have their puppies too.
Anyways. Six is a lot, even tho they are small breeds.
I know the protocol for bringing dogs – microchip, 2 or more rabies vaccines after the chip, certifical of health, certificate of origination, health exam upon arrival, quarantine etc – my concern is housing.
The issue I have is I cannot find much information on the process and procedure for buying a home in Japan. Renting? tons. But for buying all I can find is people bragging about cheap akiyas they flipped or youtubers talking abut their tiny apartment, or etc – and no actual guides on what to do and what to expect.
If anyone has gone through the process, you could tell me how it works? Or like what differs when foreigners buy in japan vs in other countries vs local buying etc.
by SparrowLikeBird
6 comments
Suumo has a pretty good top level article about how to buy a home here:
https://suumo.jp/article/oyakudachi/oyaku/sumai_nyumon/iesagashi/jukatsu-konyu/
The main thing to note is that as someone relatively new to the country you’re not going to get financing at all, so I hope you’ve got enough cash.
You’re also not really going to have anywhere to put 6 dogs while you’re doing the whole house hunting and buying process, so you’re going to need to figure out some sort of staged migration process to bring them over, or rehome them before you leave.
Even with planning to buy instead of rent you’re going to struggle to find something large enough to accommodate ***six*** dogs, unless you’re talking something like Chihuahuas or Jack Russells.
Japanese houses (Not just apartments) are pretty famously small. Like an average house is 95sqm (~1000sqf). You’re going to have to go well out to the outskirts of any major city to even have a hope of finding something big enough to comfortably accommodate that many dogs plus a few people. Hell, I live in what is considered a fairly large house (~160sqm) in the *deep* countryside and I couldn’t keep 6 dogs comfortably. Finding something large enough is going to be a significant struggle.
As someone has said, use [suumo.jp](http://suumo.jp) (obviously if you aren’t fluent in Japanese use google to translate the page) and look at used detached houses. There are also services out there that assist foreigners with purchasing houses in Japan, but you will have to pay for those and also pay cash for the house. For that many dogs you are definitely going to need a 5+LDK, which can be found, (and I understand everyone’s circumstances are different,) but “affordable” 5+LDKs are going to be on the outskirts or out in the sticks and will need to TLC/full renovations.
I shudder at how much it’ll cost just flying all those dogs to Japan. It cost my friend $8k per dog just a few months ago.
Moved with more pets than that. Bought home cash. Was easier than my home purchase in the us. Google Nippon Tradings International. That’s who I used. Good luck finding an airline to take them all in one go, we did multiple trips.
There’s some good advice here already, but I wanted to share my experience with this. We did something similar, although we only moved two large dogs and purchased a house before we arrived. This will take some serious planning, so having a cushion of time is pretty critical here, as well as cash on hand to make it work.
We purchased our house before the move, and the process took about 3-4 months to complete. We found an English speaking agent and took a series of trips to Japan to view houses before the move. If this is possible, I would highly recommend seeing potential houses in person.
For the actual house purchase, you will need to pay cash for everything. Plan on having an extra 20% above listing price just in case. In addition to your agent, you will also need to engage a Scrivener, who will act as an intermediary on your paperwork. There are also agencies who can help you do the entire purchase process. You don’t need to be a resident to purchase, although setting up utilities and such will be difficult. Our agent helped with this.
For the import of the dogs, we completed the process ourselves and shipped the dogs as cargo on our flight. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, but the [MAFF](https://www.maff.go.jp/aqs/english/animal/dog/import-other.html) website lays it out pretty clearly. Again, be prepared to spend some time on this. It took me about 6 months to get everything in order, including rabies vaccinations, testing and all the import/export paperwork. We flew on ANA from Singapore and the cost per pet was $250USD, in addition to our tickets. Their space had to be reserved in advance, and I believe there was a limit of one animal per customer, but I’m not 100% sure on that.
You don’t mention where you’re looking or the size of the dogs, I’m assuming you’re looking for a house with a little bit of space outside a city. You would need to also purchase a car to make any of this feasible. Again, be prepared to pay in cash and make sure your house has parking.