Foreigners Renting in Japan: Be Careful with Best Estate – Hidden Fees & Misleading Website
It all started when I was looking for an apartment in Japan. After spending two years going back and forth, I decided to try using a different agency this time.
Several apartments were proposed to me by Best Estate JP, a company that presented itself as an agency specializing in rentals for foreigners. It appeared as though they acted as a bridge between the tenant and the landlord, and I genuinely believed they were a proper real estate agency.
But they weren’t. They turned out to be a brokerage firm acting as a fourth party in the middle of the deal, something they never made clear upfront.
Here’s what happened:
Brokerage fee: 160,000 yen (an entire month’s rent taken by the company, greedy and shady)
Landlord’s key money (non-refundable): Basically a “thank you” payment to the owner. (I own properties myself in other countries, should I start asking tenants to thank me? This tradition feels absurdly outdated and greedy.)
Real estate agency’s own fee: 160,000 yen (it should be 50%, so shady real estate agency to be honest)
First month’s rent: 160,000 yen (finally, actually paying for the apartment)
Cleaning fee + miscellaneous charges: approx. 30,000–50,000 yen
Additional setup costs (AC, appliances, internet, Wi-Fi): approx. 167,000 yen
Total initial cost just to move in: roughly 640,000–700,000 yen (about 5,000 USD), before even buying furniture or paying monthly bills.
Their website is misleading because it advertises “guarantor-free options for foreign residents” and presents them as a real estate agency. In reality, they insert themselves as an unnecessary middleman, charging not just a small fee, but an entire month’s rent on top of all the standard move-in costs.
For comparison, platforms like Suumo simply receive a commission from the listing agent, which is standard practice, but this company takes an additional cut on top of that.
Nowhere do they clearly state that they are not a real estate agency but a separate brokerage taking a significant share of the payment.
If I had known all of this, I would never have shared my personal information or proceeded with the process. The entire experience felt dishonest and completely lacking in transparency.
Foreigners should be aware that when you hire this company, you are hiring a brokerage firm, one that essentially performs the same task a real estate agent would do, but charges you an entire month’s rent just for forwarding information that the real estate agent would normally provide directly.