Today we wrote a letter to the Japan Times about an article they printed last week about rentals for foreigners. Here it is:

In the May 15 article “Housing glut opens door to foreign tenants” Takahide Ezoe of the Shinjuku Japanese Language Institute states that “Japanese…know that you don’t usually get the amount of deposit back” when they move out of a rental property, and thus potential foreign renters have to be made to understand this point since, According to Ezoe, “to foreigners, a deposit is something that will be returned fully.”

In principle, the purpose of a security deposit, or shikikin, is to provide reserve funds in the event that the tenant is delinquent with his or her rent. However, many landlords consider it money that can be used after the tenant moves out for repairs and maintenance. In most developed countries, landlords are legally responsible for normal wear-and-tear on a rental property, not the tenant. Foreigners who have not caused any unusual damage to their residences should by all rights expect to receive their security deposits in full when they leave, as should Japanese tenants. In fact, many Japanese have sued landlords to recover their security deposits and won.

As the article points out, potential renters should read their contracts. If they don’t understand the security deposit issue then they should have it clarified by the landlord or agent. When they move out and do not receive their deposits back, they should confront the landlord and demand an explanation. Many landlords use security deposits, key money (reikin), and contract renewal fees as tools to gouge tenants, whose rights in these matters are not clearly defined by Japanese law. To call these conditions “customs,” which is what realtors tend to do, is to obfuscate their questionable legality. They are certainly unethical.

In a recent letter to the editor of the Asahi Shimbun a landlord told the story of an elderly tenant of his. The woman was an acquaintance of his mother who lost her apartment when the building she lived in was demolished. She was living on welfare and the letter writer’s mother offered her one of the smaller apartments in her building at a lower rent than normal, presumably as a favor to an old friend. She didn’t charge her a deposit or any gift money.

Eventually, the tenant died, and the landlord could not locate any close relatives. All her worldly possessions were in that apartment. His mother called the local authorities, who told her that when a person receiving public assistance died the cremation costs would be borne by the local government, but as far as disposing of the deceased’s possessions, that was the responsibility of the property owner. And since the mother had not asked her friend for a deposit and she had no savings, they would have to dispose of the effects and clean the apartment with their own money. (As it happens, the tenant was in the hospital for the last several months of her life and was unable to pay her rent during that time also.)

In the end, the man wrote, he paid around ¥150,000 out of pocket to clean up the apartment, which doesn’t sound like very much, but without a system to address such situations, it’s likely that landlords are not going to rent properties to elderly people of little or no means since they might get stuck with a huge cleaning bill if the tenant dies suddenly. And who can blame them?