After the purchase
Short-stay management in Kyoto, after you buy
In Kyoto the sale is usually where the relationship ends. The buyer gets the keys, a folder of Japanese paperwork, and a building that now needs a license, a fire inspection, an explanation to the neighbors, and someone who picks up the phone when a guest is locked out at midnight. We have been doing that second part since 2019, seven years before we were licensed to broker a sale at all. Operating came first here, and it is still the larger half of what we do.
We manage sixteen short-stay homes in Kyoto City today, and more than twenty have passed through our hands since 2019. We hold both of the licenses this work requires in Japan, one for brokerage and one for lodging management, and both numbers are below. If the house you are looking at cannot legally be licensed, we would rather tell you now than take it on and find out together.
Send us the address
Residential lodging management operator
Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (01) No. F03122
Real estate license
Kyoto Governor (1) No. 15131
Under management
16 short-stay homes
The number in parentheses on a Japanese real estate license counts how many times the license has been granted, not rank. Licenses run five years, so a firm licensed for the first time reads (1). Ours was first issued on April 23, 2026 and runs to April 23, 2031. The lodging management registration is the older of the two: entered on January 18, 2024, valid to January 18, 2029. We have operated guest houses in Kyoto since 2019 and added the brokerage license in 2026.
The registration this work runs on
Japan’s Private Lodging Business Act contains a rule most overseas owners meet late. A notified private lodging where the host does not live on site has to hand its management to a registered residential lodging management operator, so the owner cannot simply appoint a cleaning company or an agent who is not on the register. We are on it: registered with the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism as (01) No. F03122, entered on January 18, 2024 and valid to January 18, 2029, and listed in the register the Kinki Regional Development Bureau publishes. The duties that come with the registration are set by the statute: keeping the property sanitary, explaining the house and its rules to every guest, answering complaints and inquiries, and keeping the operation from degrading the living environment around it.
That registration does not cover everything we run, and it would be easy to let a reader assume it did. It governs the private lodging line, the one with the 180-night ceiling. A property operating under a simple lodging permit (簡易宿所) sits under the Hotels and Inns Business Act, where no management registration exists to hold and none is required. Day to day the two look identical: same cleaning standard, same guest register, same person answering the phone at midnight. The legal footing underneath them is different, and an owner handing a building to a manager should know which one their house stands on.
Of the sixteen homes under our management, twelve operate under simple lodging permits and four are notified private lodgings, which means F03122 governs four of them and not all sixteen. Guests have left more than 850 reviews across the homes we run, averaging 4.97. No owner has moved to another management company since we started in 2019. Licensing practice, fire officers, ward offices and neighborhood expectations are all local, and that local knowledge is most of what this work is.
What we take on
The first stretch is paperwork, and it decides everything that follows. Zoning comes before anything else, because the zoning district (用途地域) a parcel sits in sets the ceiling on how many nights the house may legally sell, and no renovation budget lifts it. After that come the permit application or the notification, the fire equipment and the fire department’s sign-off, whatever the Building Standards Act asks of a change in use, and the advance explanation to the neighbors that Kyoto expects before a lodging business opens on their street. The neighbor visit is done in person, in Japanese, by someone who will still be reachable in a year, which is the piece an owner abroad cannot do from a laptop. Parts of this are settled at the city counter and not at our desk, so we would rather put the questions before you commit than after.
Once the doors open the work changes shape. Guests write to us in English, Japanese and Chinese, at every hour, mostly about door codes, trains, and which morning the trash goes out. Cleaning and linen run on our own schedule with our own suppliers, coordinated house by house so that a same-day turnover never becomes your problem. The guest register and the identity check on arrival are legal obligations, and we keep both to the standard an inspector expects, because the operator is who answers when they are missing.
Then the reporting, which is the only part of this an owner has to read. We reconcile bookings, nightly rates, cleaning, linen and consumables, and send you a statement your accountant can use, in English, Japanese or Chinese. You are not asked to log into a dashboard or to learn this business. What you will not get from us is a number we cannot source.
What we will not take on
We turn down houses that cannot legally hold a license, and we will not start operating one on the assumption that a permit will come through later. Buildings do get refused, for structural reasons: the street frontage, the fire route, the zone, the use classification. When that is the answer, we say it early, because the alternative is an owner paying to furnish a house that will never open.
On the private lodging side the ceiling is 180 nights a year, nationwide, and no amount of demand moves it. Residential-exclusive zones (住居専用地域) are stricter again, because a Kyoto ordinance narrows absentee operation there to a winter window of roughly sixty nights. We check the zone while a house is still a candidate, and we did exactly that for our own four notified properties on August 5, 2026: none of them sits in a residential-exclusive zone, so the national 180-night cap applies to them and the winter window does not. If a house you are weighing does sit in one, you will hear the number sixty from us before you make an offer, and not from the ward office afterwards.
We will not tell you what a house will earn. We can tell you what it costs to run, how many nights the law lets it sell, what the license will demand of the building, and what has to be fixed before it opens. Turning that into a projection is your calculation, made with your own advisers. The law behind our brokerage license treats promises about future income as an advertising matter, and on this subject we would rather be dull than persuasive.
What it costs, and how we start
Operations share
25% of each booking
Monthly retainer
None
Cleaning and linen
Billed per use
25% of each booking, no fixed monthly fee, and cleaning and linen billed per use. That is the whole structure. The 25% is calculated on room revenue only, on the listed amount before platform fees, and the cleaning fee a guest pays through the platform is not part of that base. Per use billing for cleaning and linen is normal in this market and we bill that way too, so the question worth putting to any manager is whether the breakdown is legible when it arrives. Ours arrives itemized line by line, and supplier invoices are available on request.
Management rates in Kyoto generally fall between 20 and 30 percent, most often around 25, and knowing that settles very little. A lower share applied to an optimistic occupancy assumption can cost more than a higher share applied to a realistic one, and a low share combined with a monthly fee and cleaning billed on a different basis can cost more than either. The comparison that tells you something is one full month, rebuilt line by line, with every charge in it. Ask us for that, ask the same of anyone else you are considering, then compare the totals.
From signed agreement to first guest
A handover starts with documents, before anyone sets foot in the house. We ask for the title records, the floor plan, the zone, the fire equipment history, and whatever the previous operator filed, and from those we tell you whether we think the license is obtainable and what getting it would involve. If the answer is no, all you have spent is the effort of gathering the documents. That conversation happens before any agreement is signed, because it is the only honest order to do it in.
Once the management agreement is signed, the license work runs alongside everything physical. We order the fire equipment and book its inspection, visit the neighbors in person, furnish the house, fit the locks, write the guest manual in three languages, photograph the rooms, and build and price the listings. The permit sets the pace, and it is the one item we cannot compress by working harder. For a house that needs a simple lodging permit from scratch, plan in months; for a notified private lodging in a building that already complies, it is shorter.
We give you a date range once we have seen the papers, and we tell you when it slips. It does slip, usually at a counter, and an owner nine time zones away deserves to hear that the day it happens. The first booking is the point where the whole thing stops being paperwork. After that you should hear from us about once a month, with numbers.
Send us the address. It does not have to be a house you bought from us, and it does not have to be a house you own yet, since the useful moment is while you are still deciding. We will tell you the zone it sits in, which license it could hold, what stands in the way, what the work would involve, and whether we would take it on. If the answer is that it cannot be licensed, that is what you will hear, and it is worth more to you than a yes that falls apart in month four.
We do not forecast income. We publish occupancy figures, and we flag a property’s licensing risk before you commit, because zoning, fire and licensing decisions rest with Kyoto City and the relevant authorities.
081 K.K. (Moogo), 43-3-1F Arashiyama Uchidacho, Nishikyo Ward, Kyoto 616-0027. Telephone 075-600-0776. Real estate license: Kyoto Governor (1) No. 15131. Residential lodging management operator: Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (01) No. F03122.