Completion is not the finish line: what comes looking for you in your first year of owning Japanese property

Funds transferred, keys handed over — most buyers assume the job is done. In Japan the real work starts the day after completion: the domestic contact now required on title, the tax agent, the acquisition tax that lands months later, the fixed asset tax decided every 1 January, and the 20.42% withheld before rent reaches you. Here is the first-year timeline, and the points Hong Kong buyers most often get wrong.