1. Why acquisition costs matter more than most people think
Many investors focus on yield and forget that their true entry basis is not the brochure price. In Japan, acquisition costs – taxes, registration, legal and brokerage – can be meaningful, especially for smaller tickets where fixed fees are a larger percentage of the total. Ignoring them compresses your apparent yield and distorts portfolio planning.
A serious playbook therefore treats acquisition costs as a core input, not an afterthought.
2. Typical categories of acquisition costs
Without going into every edge case, most standard residential transactions will involve some combination of:
- Brokerage fees
- Registration and license tax
- Judicial scrivener (shiho shoshi) fees
- Stamp duty on the contract
- Acquisition-related bank fees (if financed)
Depending on how you structure the deal, some items will dominate, others will be minor but still relevant for accurate modelling.
3. Thinking in percentage of price and absolute yen
A practical way to work is to think in both percentage and absolute yen. At smaller ticket sizes, a fixed legal fee can move the percentage significantly; at higher prices, the same amount is almost noise. What looks like "just a few percent" can therefore mean a very different thing for a 25m JPY unit versus a 60m JPY one.
The goal is to internalise a realistic typical range so you can quickly sanity-check new opportunities.
4. How acquisition costs interact with leverage
When you use financing, acquisition costs interact with leverage in a non-trivial way. Some costs are paid in cash upfront, increasing your equity outlay; others are rolled into the loan or offset against future tax. This changes your effective cash-on-cash profile and the payback period on the initial equity.
A clean model therefore separates "pure acquisition costs" from ongoing financing costs and makes explicit how they are funded.
5. Building an internal rule-of-thumb for your own strategy
Over time, you should develop your own internal rule-of-thumb ranges for different types of deals: single-unit condos, small buildings, higher-ticket properties, cash versus financed. The point is not to memorise every yen, but to know quickly whether a proposed deal fits inside your normal corridor or sits outside it.
6. Connecting acquisition costs to your all-in basis
Ultimately, acquisition costs roll into one key number: your all-in basis. This is the figure you should use when you calculate GRM, yield and IRR. Using the brochure price alone will systematically overstate your returns.
The guide "Financing, Taxes & Fees in Japan — Complete Guide" provides a deeper, more technical walkthrough of how to integrate these costs into institutional-grade models.