What you pay beyond the price

In short

• Budget around 6 per cent of the purchase price for the costs that sit on top of it.

• Stamp duty falls on signing day, the registration tax and the scrivener's fee on settlement day; when the commission is paid is set by your contract.

• Acquisition tax arrives by post months after you hold the keys, which is why it catches people.

• Registration tax and acquisition tax are calculated on the assessed value in the tax register, not on what you paid.

• Most of the reliefs below expire on 31 March 2027 and need checking again after that.

• The assessed value certificate turns every estimate here into a real number, and you can ask for it before you offer.

A listing gives you one number. The money leaves your account in five or six, spread over about six months.

None of them is a surprise, and every one can be worked out before you make an offer. What catches buyers is the order they arrive in, and the fact that the two largest taxes are not calculated on the price at all. Everything below runs through one example: a 30 million yen second-hand house, anywhere in Japan, bought by an individual living abroad who will not live in it. Where the answer changes for a different buyer, the article says so.

Signing day

Stamp duty is a physical revenue stamp on the contract, and its amount comes from a band table. A contract of more than 10 million and up to 50 million yen carries 10,000 yen under the reduced rate that runs to 31 March 2027. The full rate for that band is 20,000 yen, so the reduction is real and dated.

Two details cost people money here. The duty is charged per original copy, so a transaction where seller and buyer each keep a signed original carries two lots of it. A purely electronic contract carries none at all, because the Stamp Tax Act taxes documents and an electronic record is not one. That is a structural gap rather than a relief, which is why it has no expiry date, and a signed paper copy handed over later becomes taxable again.

The brokerage commission is capped by a ministerial notice, and the cap is tiered. On the first 2 million yen it is 5.5 per cent, on the portion up to 4 million it is 4.4 per cent, and on everything above that it is 3.3 per cent, all inclusive of consumption tax. On 30 million yen that works out at 1,056,000 yen from one side of the deal.

This is a ceiling, not a fixed fee.

Below 8 million yen the arithmetic inverts. Since 1 July 2024 a property at or under that price can carry up to 330,000 yen per side, more than the tiered calculation gives: on a 5 million yen house the tiered cap is 231,000 and the ceiling is 330,000. The broker must explain and agree that in writing before the mandate is signed.

Settlement day

Registration and licence tax is charged on transferring the title, and it splits between land and building. Land bought by sale is taxed at 1.5 per cent until 31 March 2029, down from a headline 2.0 per cent, and that reduction carries no residence test and no floor-area test. Companies get it, investors get it, and a house you intend to rent out gets it.

The building is a different story. The headline rate is 2.0 per cent, and the 0.3 per cent residential rate is reserved for an individual who will live in the house. There are further conditions: a dwelling of 50 square metres or more, a purchase or an auction rather than a gift or an inheritance, registration within a year, and for a second-hand house either construction on or after 1 January 1982 or a certificate of conformity with current seismic standards. On top of that, a certificate of residential dwelling from the municipality goes with the application. Without that certificate you pay the headline rate, and filing it late does not bring the relief back.

On our example that is 180,000 yen on the land and 120,000 on the building, so 300,000 yen in total. A buyer who qualified for the residential rate on the building would pay 18,000 instead of 120,000.

The judicial scrivener handles the registration and sets their own fee, because there is no statutory scale. The national federation's 2024 survey puts a straightforward transfer at around 57,000 yen on average, tax included, and a 50,000 to 80,000 yen range is a fair expectation for a clean file. The survey's model case assumes one plot and one building with a combined assessed value of 10 million yen. The fee scales with neither your purchase price nor the assessed value, so double the value does not mean double the fee.

Fire insurance is paid up front, usually for the five years that most insurers now write as a maximum. No average premium is published in yen, so a quote is the only way to know the figure. A building run as licensed lodging rather than lived in is normally rated as a commercial risk, and keeping a residential policy on it can void a claim for non-disclosure. Tell the insurer the intended use before you sign. Property tax for the current year is settled between you and the seller by apportionment from the handover date. That is contractual practice rather than law. The start date tends to be 1 January in eastern Japan and 1 April in the west, but no single custom governs it, so the clause in your contract is what decides.

The tax that arrives months later

Real property acquisition tax is a prefectural tax, and the bill comes by post some months after the registration goes through. Three to four months is common. A year is possible. Nobody asks you for it on settlement day, which is exactly why it is the one that hurts you.

Land and residential buildings are taxed at 3 per cent until 31 March 2027, against a headline 4 per cent. The 3 per cent applies to land whatever you use it for, so the land in this example is taxed at 3 per cent even though nobody lives there. Land assessed as building land also has its tax base halved over the same period. Both are dated reliefs, not permanent features of the tax.

On our example the land is 12 million assessed, halved to 6 million, taxed at 3 per cent for 180,000 yen. The building is 6 million assessed at 3 per cent for another 180,000. That is 360,000 yen arriving in the post long after the keys changed hands.

Change the use and the number changes.

A building that is not a dwelling is taxed at 4 per cent, and the cabinet order excludes a holiday home from the definition of a dwelling. A holiday home here means one kept purely for recreation, which is not the same as a second home you actually live in part of the time. Bought purely for recreation, the same building costs 240,000 rather than 180,000, and licensed lodging can land in the same bracket.

The number that decides two of these taxes

Registration tax and acquisition tax are both calculated on the value entered in the fixed asset tax register. Not the asking price, not what you paid, not the valuation your bank uses. Everything above rests on an assumed 12 million yen for the land and 6 million for the building, and that assumption is mine, made so the arithmetic can run.

Your real figures exist already.

They sit on the assessed value certificate held by the municipality, and on the tax statement the current owner receives every year. Either one turns every estimate here into an actual number, and either one can be requested before you offer. Ask early, because the same 30 million yen buys very different tax bills: land benefits twice, from the 1.5 per cent rate and the halved acquisition base, while a building bought for anything but living in gets neither residential relief.

Adding it up for our example: 10,000 in stamp duty, 1,056,000 in commission, 300,000 in registration tax, 50,000 to 80,000 for the scrivener, and 360,000 in acquisition tax. That is 1,776,000 to 1,806,000 yen, which is 5.9 to 6.0 per cent of the price, before insurance and the property tax apportionment.

The homes currently for sale are on moogo's listings.

Questions buyers ask

Is 6 per cent a reliable rule of thumb? For a second-hand purchase with no mortgage, yes. A mortgage adds arrangement fees, a guarantee fee, stamp duty on the loan agreement and a registration tax on the security at 0.4 per cent of the sum borrowed. The stamp duty reduction above does not reach a loan agreement, so a 30 million yen loan carries 20,000 yen rather than 10,000. A new-build from a developer adds consumption tax on the building.

Why does the price in the example carry no consumption tax? Land is exempt, and a building only carries it when the seller sells in the course of business. A private individual selling the home they lived in is not doing that. Consumption tax has not vanished from the article, though: the commission cap and the scrivener figures above already include it.

Does a flat cost the same as a house? The structure is the same, the details are not. The 50 square metre test uses the internal measurement on the register, which is smaller than the floor area in the brochure. A new-build flat also carries consumption tax on the building, and management and sinking-fund charges start on the handover date.

When do I actually need the money? Stamp duty at signing, and commonly half the commission, though the contract decides that. Everything else on settlement day, except the acquisition tax, which should stay in your account until the bill comes.

Will these rates still apply when I buy? Several will not. The stamp duty reduction, the residential registration rate, the 3 per cent acquisition rate and the halved land base all expire on 31 March 2027. The 1.5 per cent land rate runs to 31 March 2029.

Every figure above comes from a published rate table and a document you are entitled to see. Plan for the order: signing, settlement, then a tax bill months after you stopped thinking about it.

To have these numbers worked out on a specific address, tell moogo what to look for.

Written against published law and official sources as of 22 August 2026; rules change. 081株式会社 is a licensed real estate broker, not a tax or legal practice. This is general information, not advice on your situation, and case-specific decisions rest with the competent authority and your own professional.