Hi, wondering on anyone’s input on this. I’m renting from Village House and I’ve been living in this apartment for 5 years now. It’s a proper dump for sure but I kinda like it for various reasons, I got used to it, feels like home and moving out / apartment hunting wouldn’t be a option right now.
Currently whole contract is on my wife and we want to change it to my name for couple of reasons. We applied for contract change and they bombarded us with paperwork in usual Japan style. One thing that particularly annoys me is that they are asking for my passbook to see my bank account balance. My bank doesn’t have passbook so they said internet banking screenshot is ok. I’ve sent them the screenshot along with my salary pay slips, my underwear serial number etc but now they want to see my recent account transactions as well. Can they LEGALLY ask for this? I have ok income and more than enough rents worth on account so don’t understand why all of this. Especially for as shitty apt as this one (built in 1966, up until recently more than half of apts. in the building were empty). Quite honestly I was quite happy with the place / company and was always thinking I would rent next apartment from them as well but not so sure about that anymore. Searched around sub first and found threads with similar questions but it was never really addressed if it’s legal or not. Thanks
2 comments
Big old IANAL disclaimer, but landlords aren’t legally required to enter into a contract with any specific candidate tenant. So even if asking for a bank history was illegal, in practice, if you refuse, they can turn around and just say “the landlord doesn’t want to rent to you because he doesn’t like your vibe” as long as it’s not openly discriminatory. And as we all know, even discriminatory rejections are par for the course with rentals and foreigners.
If I were you, I’d politely request that they accept just the balance statement without a transaction history. If they refuse, then it’s up to you to provide it or fall back to the current state of your wife being the lessee, whose contract they presumably don’t have grounds to terminate.
Happens all the time.
IF you refuse, landlord will just refuse your request.
That’s why UR apartment is better.
They have 3 methods of proving income.