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Fixed-Term Leases in Japan: The Cheap-Rent Trap
TL;DR
Japan has two residential lease types: ordinary (普通借家) auto-renews and caps rent increases; fixed-term (定期借家) simply ends, with no renewal right. In 2026 landlords are shifting to fixed-term to reprice or reclaim units, often masking it with below-market rent and zero key money. It clusters in newer, corporate, and family-sized stock in wards like Minato, Shibuya, and Setagaya.
You find it on the third night of searching: a 2LDK in Shibuya, real photos, a station you recognize, and a rent that’s roughly half what every other Shibuya 2LDK on the page is asking. No key money. No deposit. You assume you got lucky. You did not get lucky. You found a fixed-term lease (定期借家 teiki shakuya), and the discount is the bait for a trade most foreign renters don’t know they’re making.
This is the one structural decision in the Japanese rental system that almost no English-language guide explains before you’ve already signed. Here’s how the two lease types differ, why landlords are pushing fixed-term hard in 2026, and the data fingerprint that tells you which one you’re looking at.
What is a fixed-term lease in Japan (定期借家)?
Japan has two residential contract types, and the difference is the single most important thing on the page after the rent number.
An ordinary lease (普通借家 futsū shakuya) is the default and the one most renters assume they have. It auto-renews. The tenant has a statutory right to stay, and the landlord cannot raise rent at renewal without mutual consent or a court ruling. It is, in practice, strongly pro-tenant once you’re in.
A fixed-term lease (定期借家 teiki shakuya) does not renew. It has a hard end date — usually two years, sometimes one or even six months — and at that date the contract simply ends. There is no right to extend. If the landlord offers a new contract, it’s a new negotiation at whatever rent they now want, and they can also decline to offer one at all. The format was created by Japan’s 2000 housing-supply law specifically to give owners an exit that ordinary leases don’t.
During the fixed term itself you’re reasonably protected: rent is generally locked and you can’t be evicted early except for cause. The risk is entirely at the end date — and the end date always comes.
Why are landlords switching to fixed-term in 2026?
Because the math has tilted hard in their favor and fixed-term is how they capture it.
Tokyo’s 23-ward rents have set new records for 26 consecutive months. New supply has fallen four years running. Central land is scarce, construction costs are up, and the April 2024 cap on construction-worker overtime slowed every project’s delivery. Demand is climbing from the other side: returning foreign professionals, university students back in person, and corporate relocations all competing for a shrinking pool.
In that market, an ordinary lease is a problem for owners: a tenant who signed at last year’s rate has a legal right to stay near that rate. A fixed-term lease solves it. The landlord doesn’t need to negotiate or evict — they just decline to renew, then relist at the current market rate. For a unit a corporate owner expects to reoccupy after an overseas posting, fixed-term is also the only clean way to guarantee they get it back.
To offset how unattractive “no renewal right” sounds, landlords sweeten it: a visibly below-market rent, and “zero-zero” terms — waived key money (礼金 reikin) and waived deposit (敷金 shikikin). That discount is the price of an option. The landlord keeps the right to take the unit back at the end date, and you are the one paying to hand it over.
How do you spot a fixed-term listing before you sign?
Here’s the hard part: Japanese listing portals rarely surface contract type as a filter, and our own dataset — 75,000+ listing observations scraped weekly from SUUMO, Homes.co.jp, and at Home since late March 2026 — can’t tag 契約種類 directly either, because the source listings frequently don’t state it. That opacity is the trap. No English-language guide can point you at a fixed-term listing, because pointing requires the numbers behind every ward. That is the one thing we can put on the table.
What the data can show is the fingerprint a likely fixed-term listing leaves: a rent well below its ward’s norm for that size, paired with zero-zero terms, in newer or corporate-heavy stock.
Start with the size-adjusted rent gap. A cheap 1K is just a cheap ward. A cheap 2LDK in an expensive ward is the signal — that’s the family-sized, corporate-owned stock where fixed-term concentrates. Current ward averages (May 2026):
| Ward | Avg 1K | Avg 2LDK | Zero-key % | Avg building age |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minato | ¥141,851 | ¥498,068 | 34% | 13 yr |
| Shibuya | ¥131,552 | ¥445,181 | 41% | 11 yr |
| Chiyoda | ¥138,171 | ¥468,413 | 34% | 14 yr |
| Meguro | ¥119,041 | ¥334,441 | 38% | 10 yr |
| Setagaya | ¥108,289 | ¥223,619 | 38% | 9 yr |
A Shibuya 2LDK advertised at ¥260,000 is not a deal in a ward that averages ¥445,181 for that layout — it’s a contract-type question you need to ask before anything else. The wider the gap below the ward’s 2LDK average, the harder you press on whether it’s 普通借家 or 定期借家.
Which Tokyo wards carry the most fixed-term risk?
The concentration follows corporate ownership. Minato, Shibuya, and Setagaya hold large amounts of family-sized housing owned by professionals who are themselves subject to overseas transfer — they want the unit back, so they let it on fixed terms. Newer buildings skew the same way: developers of fresh stock increasingly default to fixed-term.
Our data lets you read the second half of the fingerprint — the zero-zero plus newer-stock combination:
| Ward | Zero-key % | Avg building age |
|---|---|---|
| Shinagawa | 61% | 7 yr |
| Koto | 53% | 7 yr |
| Toshima | 52% | 7 yr |
| Sumida | 51% | 7 yr |
| Kita | 48% | 6 yr |
This is not a list of “avoid these wards.” Plenty of zero-key listings in Sumida or Koto are ordinary leases. The east/north belt has tenant-friendly key-money norms, as covered in the April rent report. The point is narrower: when a listing combines a below-size-norm rent and zero-zero terms and a near-new building and a corporate-transfer ward, treat fixed-term as the default assumption until the contract says otherwise.
Is a fixed-term lease ever the right choice?
Yes — and this is why it’s a trap, not a scam. For the right renter, fixed-term is the better deal.
If your stay is genuinely time-boxed — a two-year posting, a degree program, a visa you’re not sure you’ll renew — you were going to move anyway. In that case the lower rent and the zero-zero savings are pure upside. Waived key money and deposit on a ¥150,000 unit is roughly ¥300,000 you keep at move-in. Over a fixed two-year stay you don’t care that it doesn’t renew, because neither do you.
The trap only closes on people who wanted to stay. Then the bill arrives as a forced move (another ¥300,000+ in move-in costs elsewhere, plus the search) or a re-sign at the landlord’s new, uncapped rate. Run your own numbers in the cost calculator before you decide the discount is worth it, and read the complete cost guide for the full move-in fee stack. If your timeline is short and uncertain, a share house or UR may beat both lease types on flexibility.
How do you protect yourself?
Four moves, in order:
- Ask the contract type in writing before you apply. The phrase is 契約種類 (keiyaku shurui) — is it 普通借家 or 定期借家? Get the answer in a message you can keep, not a viewing-room conversation.
- If it’s fixed-term, get the exact end date and the renewal terms in writing. “Re-contract usually possible” is not a renewal right. Find out whether a new contract is offered, on what rent basis, and what notice you get.
- If you need long-term stability, prioritize 普通借家 and treat a steep discount as a prompt to re-check the contract type, not a reason to skip the question. Use a bilingual agent before signing — every lease is in Japanese, and this is the clause to get right.
- Plan your search timeline around it. A surprise non-renewal mid-visa is far worse than a slightly higher ordinary-lease rent you can actually keep. The housing timeline guide covers when to start; renters without Japanese income should factor extra lead time for the contract-type conversation.
The cheap, spacious, no-fee apartment isn’t a glitch. It’s a fixed-term lease doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Knowing that before you sign is the entire difference between a great two years and an involuntary move.
Tools and data
- Rent index — sortable table of all 23 wards
- Compare any two wards side by side
- Cost calculator — move-in fee what-if
Disclosure: I built this site and a free Telegram bot (Tanu) on top of the same dataset. The data here is published independent of the bot.
Data source
Ward figures are averages of active listings from Tokyo’s 23 special wards, scraped from SUUMO, Homes.co.jp, and at Home, refreshed weekly (75,000+ observations since late March 2026; latest read 19 May 2026). Zero-key-money percentages reflect the share of listings explicitly waiving 礼金 (reikin) at observation time. Contract type (普通借家 vs 定期借家) is not reliably published in source listings and is not inferred in our dataset; the proxy patterns described here are correlative, not a contract-type label. Public ward-level snapshot at /rent-index.
