Hong Kong buyers’ interest in Japanese property hit as Japan tightens home-share rules
Property agents say investment returns for home-share property are as high as 10pc, compared with 4 to 5 pc for long-term leases
Japan’s stiffer home-sharing controls have dampened Japanese home sales among Hong Kong buyers who are increasingly investing in the country’s properties to operate shared lodging services.
The new rules have also forced the world’s largest home-sharing app Airbnb to cancel thousands of bookings in the country, and pulled many more operators off their platform.
“Basically, we now tell our customers not to think about buying a flat to run a home-share in Japan. Long-term lease would be the best option,” said Michael Cheung, branch manager of Trusty Japan Realty, which specialises in selling Japanese property in Hong Kong.
The number of completed deals for the agency last month – ahead of the new regulation which took effect on June 15 – dropped to about 50, a quarter less than the previous month.
The new law aims to better regulate and maintain the quality of lodging services as the number of tourists in Japan rises; it jumped 19 per cent to 28.7 million in 2017.
Shared lodging operators are now required to obtain approvals from respective local governments, with the maximum period that they can only rent out their properties for home-share capped at 180 days a year. At the same time, they are also subject to further local government restrictions. For example, Kyoto only allows private short-term lodging between mid-January to mid-March.