Japan places no restrictions on foreign ownership of real estate: no residency requirement, no citizenship requirement, full freehold. That is why you own, or are about to own, an apartment in Tokyo or a house in Hokkaido. Turning it into a licensed short-term rental while living in another country is a different project, and most of the internet's answers to it are written by people selling something.
We are 株式会社AG STAY, a licensed operator running our own three buildings and six rooms in Tokyo and Sapporo. Permit numbers are on our company page, occupancy and cost shares on our operating data page, guest reviews on each property page as they arrived. We also manage properties for owners who have never stood in a Japanese city office. What follows is that shape, in our own figures.
How much of the work disappears when the owner lives abroad?
None of it. A room in our portfolio is opened by a new guest about seven times a month, and every one of those times is a physical event at the address.
The arithmetic is ours and checkable: over the twelve months from August 2025 to July 2026 our six rooms ran 83.6% occupancy at an average stay of 3.3 nights (measured 21 August 2026, method at operating data), and 30 x 0.836 / 3.3 is about 7.6 changeovers in a month. Those rooms took 449 bookings across the window. Whether the owner is in Setagaya or in London the count is identical; what distance changes is how many of those events the owner can attend, which is zero.
For an owner in the same city a management company is a convenience, and the gaps it leaves can be filled by driving over. For an owner abroad it is the operation itself, so the standard has to be higher and the report has to be inspectable.
The four problems distance actually creates
- Licensing happens in Japanese, in person, at a health centre and a fire department. The choice of framework itself is set out in permit vs notification, and what the permit process is actually like in getting a hotel-business permit
- Operations are physical: cleaning between stays, linen, a neighbour with a complaint, a guest who cannot get through the door at 2am. None of it can be done from abroad and all of it lands in the reviews, which is our largest cost line for a reason (cleaning, neighbour complaints)
- Money: rental income earned in Japan is taxable in Japan regardless of where the owner lives, and a non-resident generally appoints a tax agent (納税管理人) to file on their behalf. Japanese bank accounts and payout routing are their own small project
- Language: every official letter, tax notice and conversation with a neighbour happens in Japanese, and the ones that matter arrive on paper
Which framework can a non-resident owner actually run on?
Neither framework requires the owner to live in Japan, but the properties we can take on are those under a 旅館業許可 hotel-business permit, or properties whose owners want to reach that permit.
The reason is about us, not about you. AG STAY is not a registered 住宅宿泊管理業者 (residential accommodation management operator) and does not plan to become one; all six of our own rooms run on 旅館業 permits. A property that would stay on the 住宅宿泊事業法 notification route we take on only with the switch to a permit as the plan, and where zoning or the building make that permit unlikely we say so at the viewing rather than after signing.
For the requirements themselves ask the two authoritative places: the Japan Tourism Agency's minpaku portal, and the health centre and municipal office covering the property's address. A page like this one goes out of date; those two do not.
| 旅館業許可 (hotel-business permit) | 住宅宿泊事業法 notification | |
|---|---|---|
| Do we take it on | Yes | Only with a switch to the permit planned |
| Nights sellable per year | No cap | 180 |
| Occupancy ceiling the framework sets | None | 180 / 365 = 49.3% |
| Our own six rooms | All six | None |
What a manager has to clear when they are the whole operation
The checklist we would apply to ourselves, and the one to apply to us:
- Walks the licensing path with the authorities in Japanese, and says plainly when a property will not qualify instead of billing for the attempt
- Runs guests, cleaning and pricing daily rather than leaving a listing to sit there, which is the work priced in what management costs
- Answers guests around the clock without the owner being the night shift (24-hour guest response)
- Can point at its own operation, not only at client logos: permit numbers, live listings, the last ten reviews unselected. We publish ours
What has to be in the monthly report if you cannot visit?
Enough for you to check the arithmetic yourself: occupancy with its denominator defined, average nightly rate for the same month beside it, and costs by line as a share of revenue with the exclusions named.
Occupancy is the number to watch, because there is no industry-standard denominator: two honest companies can publish different figures for the same property. Ours is published: accepted bookings from our own booking system, each physical room counted once (a whole-house listing expanded onto its rooms rather than added to them), and a room counted only from the month it opened. A percentage with no stated denominator cannot be checked from another country (how to read an occupancy figure).
| What you read | What has to sit next to it |
|---|---|
| Occupancy | The denominator: which nights, per room or per listing, from opening or from signing |
| Average nightly rate | The same month, so you can see whether occupancy was bought with discounts |
| Cleaning | As a share of revenue. Ours ran 17.5% over twelve months |
| Total operating costs | Which lines are in it and which are excluded |
What the cost shares look like on our own rooms
Over the same twelve months, as a share of revenue: cleaning 17.5%, consumables 4.2%, electricity 2.6%, repairs and replacements 1.1%, accommodation tax 1.1%, gas 1.0%, insurance 0.4%, coming to 27.9% together (measured 21 August 2026).
Two exclusions have to travel with that total or it misleads. Rent and the management fee are deliberately outside it: we lease the buildings we run, and an owner handing us their own property is in a different position on both. Water is absent because it bills every two months and is tracked outside the source workbook, so the real total is slightly higher. That is the disclosure level to expect from a report you cannot audit in person (the monthly P/L).
For owners living outside Japan we produce that report in English, and we do not charge for the language.
Who handles the tax?
Rental income arising in Japan is taxed in Japan regardless of where the owner lives, and a non-resident owner generally appoints a tax agent (納税管理人) to file on their behalf. Beyond that shape this is a tax professional's territory and we will not pretend otherwise.
Where to check rather than take our word: the National Tax Agency, the tax office covering the property's address, and a tax professional working in both languages. We will introduce one. How your home country treats the same income is decided by the treaty between the two, a question for an adviser on your side.
What we carry is the layer underneath: a monthly paper trail in English, one annual file your accountant can work from, and the accommodation tax filing where the city levies one, routine work on the properties we manage.
When hiring us is the wrong call
- You have family or a partner in Japan who can be at the property on a snowy morning or when a neighbour rings. They will be faster than a contract
- The property sits outside Tokyo's 23 wards or Sapporo. We visit every property we take, and will not promise a city we cannot reach
- You want to stay on the 180-night notification route with no intention of moving to a permit. A legitimate plan, just not one we can run
- You want an occupancy figure guaranteed in writing. The 83.6% above is what our own six rooms did, not a number we will promise for a property we have not yet seen
What working with us looks like from abroad
The fee is a share of revenue, from 20%, with the exact rate set after we have seen the property; the four fee models used in Japan are compared in what management costs. Capacity applies to everyone equally: five managed properties at a time, in Tokyo's 23 wards and Sapporo only.
- You send the location and photos; we come back with which framework fits and an honest read of the property
- Licensing, setup and launch run on the Japanese side. Everything that needs your signature is explained in English before it reaches you
- Guests, cleaning, pricing and the neighbours are ours day to day, including the nights
- The monthly report reaches you in English, with the denominators, and the money reaches your account on the schedule we agree
- When something needs deciding you get the options in English with a recommendation, not a forwarded Japanese PDF