What owning costs every year

In short

• Two taxes arrive together each year, fixed asset tax at a standard 1.4 per cent and city planning tax capped at 0.3, and both run on the assessed value rather than the price you paid.

• Whoever owns the property on 1 January pays for the whole year, and the bill is normally split into four instalments.

• Most homes sit on land taxed at a sixth of its assessed value, and that discount rests on the building genuinely serving as a residence.

• A flat adds monthly fees a house never has: the latest national survey averages around 11,500 yen for management and 13,000 for the repair fund, before parking.

• Fire insurance now runs in five-year cycles, so the premium question comes back twice a decade.

• The assessed value that drives all of this sits on the annual tax statement, and the current owner already has it.

The purchase costs from the previous article in this series are paid once. These arrive every year, whether the house is lived in, let out or standing empty.

None of them is large by itself. They repay reading before the purchase rather than after, because two of them change size depending on how you use the building.

The two taxes on the register

Fixed asset tax is a municipal tax on whoever is registered as owner on 1 January, at a standard rate of 1.4 per cent of the assessed value. Standard means exactly that: the law lets a municipality set its own rate, and some charge more. City planning tax rides on the same bill where it applies, and its 0.3 per cent is a legal ceiling rather than a set rate. It is also optional: as of April 2025, only 639 of Japan's 1,719 municipalities levy it at all.

Kyoto City charges 1.4 and 0.3, with instalments in April, July, December and February. Tokyo's 23 wards are taxed by the metropolis instead of a municipality, on a different instalment calendar, and a ward-area relief there halves the city planning tax on small residential land, renewed year by year.

The same house, in other words, is billed differently in different cities. Neither city is a rule for the other.

Because the owner on 1 January pays for the year, the split you make with the seller at handover is a private settlement rather than the tax office's business. The assessed values behind the bill are reviewed on a three-year cycle, so the figure you buy with is not the figure forever.

The document to ask for is the current owner's tax statement. It shows the assessed value, both taxes, and what the land discount below is currently doing.

The discount under most homes, and how it is lost

Residential land up to 200 square metres per dwelling is taxed on one sixth of its assessed value, and the portion above that on one third, as far as ten times the building's floor area. City planning tax has its own version of the relief, at different fractions. These fractions are permanent law rather than an expiring relief, and they are why the land bill on an ordinary home looks small against the land's value.

They rest on one word: residential.

The national guidance to tax offices says the test is whether someone actually lives there on a continuing basis, not whether a lodging filing has been made. A lodging filing does not by itself remove the discount. A house run entirely as lodging, with no one actually living in it, can fail that test however residential it looks. Kyoto City's own page says plainly that using a residence as lodging can change the relief and raise the land tax. A holiday home kept purely for recreation sits outside the discount from the start.

Losing it is not a sixfold jump, because a separate adjustment caps how much of the assessed value can be taxed in a year. It is still the single largest way the same land can bill you differently from the owner before you.

There is also a way to lose it while doing nothing. A neglected empty house that draws a formal recommendation from the municipality loses the residential discount on its land. A 2023 strengthening of the vacant-house law extended that trigger to houses that are merely poorly managed, not only formally derelict ones. Advice and guidance stages do not trigger it; the recommendation does. And in the other direction, a new build earns a temporary halving of the building's fixed asset tax for its first years. The latest tax reform extends that measure for new construction through 31 March 2031.

What a flat adds every month

A house has taxes and upkeep. A flat has taxes, upkeep, and two fees that never stop.

The land ministry's condominium survey, the one official count in this area, puts the average management fee at about 11,500 yen per unit per month and the average repair-fund contribution at about 13,000, both before parking-related amounts. The same survey's headline figures including parking money run higher, around 17,100 and 13,400. Quoting the two bases interchangeably is how most wrong numbers are born.

The repair fund deserves the closer look. The ministry's own guideline for an adequate fund, worked out per square metre per month across a building's repair plan, sits above what many buildings actually collect. Nearly half of surveyed buildings run stepped plans that start low and rise.

A cheap fund today can be a levy tomorrow.

The building's long-term repair plan, not this article, is where that answer lives. Read it before you buy.

None of this exists for a detached house.

The law that makes co-owners share the cost of common parts applies to buildings divided into units. A machiya has no common parts to fund. The upkeep is all yours, but it is yours on your own schedule.

Insurance, letting, and the empty years

Fire insurance is now written for at most five years at a time, so ownership means repricing twice a decade. The industry body that sets reference rates has raised them in recent revisions. Reference rates are not premiums, and your renewal quote is set by the insurer, but it is the reference rates themselves that have moved upward.

If you let the property out, management has a price too. In a questionnaire of rental managers published by the ministry late last year, the most common fee band was 3 to 5 per cent of monthly rent, with 5 to 10 per cent next. Those are survey bands rather than a tariff, and what a given firm charges for a given house is a contract term.

An empty house still costs money. In the national survey of vacant-house owners, about half reported annual upkeep under 50,000 yen, with the most common single band at 100,000 to 200,000. The survey's definition folds the taxes above into that figure, along with utilities kept connected and the cost of coming to check on the place. A machiya left empty in Kyoto's summer humidity is also not a neutral act for the building. That is an argument for either use or honest disposal, not a drawer full of keys.

One line about the far end. When you eventually sell, the tax on your gain depends on holding period: the short-term rate is nearly double the long-term one. The boundary is judged on 1 January of the year you sell rather than on the anniversary of your purchase.

In practice, owners simply wait for that line, selling only after roughly the sixth 1 January since the purchase has passed.

Questions buyers ask

How much will the two taxes be on a specific house? The current owner's tax statement answers it exactly, and you can ask for it before you offer. Any figure computed from the asking price is the wrong base: the taxes run on assessed value, which is usually well below it.

Does renting the house out change the land discount? Letting it as an ordinary home keeps a resident in it, which is what the test looks at. Short-stay use is where the question gets real. The guidance turns on continuing residence, and Kyoto City warns that lodging use can raise the land tax. Price that question into your lodging plan before you buy.

Are the condo fees negotiable? No. They are set by the owners' association under the building's rules, and they change by resolution, not by your contract. What you can do is read the repair plan and the fund balance before you buy. A shortfall there is a future bill with your name on it.

Is city planning tax everywhere? No. It is an optional tax that only about a third of municipalities levy, mostly in urbanised areas. Kyoto City levies it; many rural towns do not. The listing's location decides which bill you get.

What happens to the taxes if I leave the house empty? Nothing at first. The risk arrives if the house is neglected long enough to draw a formal municipal recommendation, at which point the land loses its residential discount. An empty house that is maintained draws no such penalty, only the ordinary bills.

Nearly every number here is permanent law, a dated official survey, or a figure sitting on a document the seller already holds. Ask for the tax statement, read the repair plan if there is one, and the annual side of ownership stops being an estimate. The homes currently for sale are on moogo's listings.

Written against published law and official sources as of 24 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.