Job Discussion Forums

[Brooks]

I read somewhere about a teacher who had to pay the equivalent of a month of rent when he moved out. Do you think this was because he did not give 30 days notice (or 2 months in some cases)?

Brooks

[lajzar]

Some house contracts are for a fixed term, usually a whole number of years. While you can leave at any time, with these contracts, leaving early can trip a penalty clause.

Don't sign anything without getting a decent translation first.

[run-jp]

Never heard of someone forking out cash when they leave apart., but people often lose the damage deposit. real estate is a racket in Jpn. many japanese, and I mean CLEAN people, expect to lose half or so of the deposit when leaving, if the oya can find pin pricks in the wall and they werent logged on paper when moving in. it seems would be difficult for them to force new cash out of you. Japanese rarely go to court. they just call your boss until the case is resolved. thats why I always give a fake phone # and co. name to
video shops etc..... now your know whyy U R alwys asked for kaisha no namae

Tom fatalista

[Lucy Snow]

When we left Japan after 8 years, we had an interesting run-in with our landloord.

One of the walls had been completely destroyed by water damage inflicted by the many typhoons that had swept through our area over the years. Even though we had contacted the landlord many times about this, nothing was done.

A small part of another wall had been damaged by our cat.

When the "final inspection" was done, the landlord came up with a cost (over and about our security deposit) of 75,000 yen to fix the wall our cat damaged.

The university (who paid for the apartment) was assessed 50,000 yen for the water damaged wall.

We went ballistic, basically. We asked a Japanese friend of ours to come and talk to the landlord (my husband felt his Japanese wasn't up to it). Our friend went on the attack, accusing the landlord of all sorts of crimes real and imagined, and the upshot was that we only had to pay 25,000 yen for the cat-damaged wall.

The best part? We left the money with the university to forward to the landlord. After repeated attempts by the university to meet with the guy to pay the money, they gave up and wired the money back to us.

Moral of the story? If the landlord tries to stick you, fight back. Our experience was that many Japanese back down when confronted.

[Mike L.]

Sounds like BS to me.

Especially if your friend had paid key money (reikin) of a deposite (shikikin) the former you never get back. The later you should get between 50 to 80% back. Tatami mats are not your problem.

Most landlords are ignorant of the laws I imagine though the real estate agency should know.

I would approach them too.

Here are some sights in Japanese. Definitely I would have a Japanese intermediary act on your frineds behalf.


Japanese.http://www.city.chiba.jp/shouhi/izumi/izumi13-12/12_sidou_izumi.htm


http://www.retio.or.jp/


Regardless you never pay anything when moving out. You should get some money back.

Many, if not most landlords, try to steal all of your deposite. Most Japanese give it up because they are ignorant of the law and want to avoid any conflict. Don't tolerate it! You deserve most of it, shikikin, back unless you've broken stuff in the apartment.

Tatami mats are consumables and not the tennants responsibility.

There too I would insist on reciepts and I would contest any inflated prices.

If your frined was staying they could try small claims court. I imagine most landlords would do anything to avoid this place.

Let us know how things go.