Comparing Rental Yields in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka

This article is part of the Zagdim wiki series on buying property in Japan. It explains how to compare the rental markets of Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka: which official figures you can look at, what each one means, and why the city yield percentages seen in advertisements cannot be compared directly. It is written for international buyers who are weighing several Japanese cities and thinking of buying a home to rent out.

As of September 2026, Japan’s official statistics do not publish a rental yield for Tokyo, Osaka or Fukuoka. The city yield percentages on websites and in advertisements are calculated privately, each with its own method and its own deductions, so they cannot be set side by side.

To compare the three cities, look at the official statistics one at a time: rent, vacancy, the share of renters, new rental housing starts, population movement, and land prices and the rent index. Each figure carries its own survey date. Then return to the specific unit you are considering and calculate its yield yourself, using one formula and one set of deductions.

Why Does a Yield Percentage Hide the Differences Between Cities?

When comparing cities, you may see a list of percentages: one city’s yield is higher than another’s. A single yield squeezes rent, purchase price, vacancy and costs into one ratio, so the real differences between cities disappear inside it.

In Japanese advertisements, the rental yield (利回り, riyawari) is calculated as expected annual rental income divided by the acquisition price, before any costs are deducted (the pillar article on Japanese rental yield explains this in full). Two ads that both say “yield X%” may differ in what sits on top: the numerator may be the rent actually being collected or only an expected rent. An ad may also fail to say whether the figure is a gross yield (表面利回り) or a net yield (実質利回り). On top of that, the level of rents, the share of rental homes standing empty, and the speed at which purchase prices are rising all differ across the three cities.

The Short Answer: How Should You Compare the Three Cities?

First, establish one thing: there is no official city yield. Whenever you see a city yield percentage, ask who calculated it and how. Then look at the official statistics separately. For rent, use the average monthly rent of privately owned rental housing from the Housing and Land Survey (住宅・土地統計調査). For how much rental housing stands empty, the only option is to estimate a rough indicator from the number of vacant homes held for rent. For demand, look at the share of renters, single-person households and population movement. For supply, look at starts of new rental housing. For prices, look at the published land prices and the rent index. The reference dates of these figures fall in 2023, 2025 and 2026, so do not mix them in one calculation. City figures are background only; in the end you still calculate from the actual rent and price of the unit and the actual costs of its building.

Which Official Figures Can You Compare?

The table below is compiled from Japan’s official statistics. For each city it gives two levels: the prefecture (the metropolis for Tokyo, the prefecture for Osaka and Fukuoka) and the city (the 23 wards for Tokyo), because some statistics are published only at prefecture level. Figures marked ※ are ratios Zagdim calculated from official household counts; they are not published official figures.

What follows explains what each of these numbers can and cannot tell you.

Rent: Is the Average Monthly Rent the Rent You Can Expect to Collect?

No. The monthly rent in the table is the average of rents that residents report they are currently paying. It excludes common-area and management fees (共益費, 管理費), and it includes households that pay JPY 0 in rent. The survey covers old wooden houses and homes of all sizes. It is not the asking rent for a new tenancy, and it is not the rent a particular investment apartment can fetch.

Rent also differs with the construction type and size of the home. For privately owned rentals nationwide, the average is JPY 54,409 a month for wooden homes and JPY 68,548 for non-wooden homes (Oct 1, 2023). Measured by floor area, privately owned rentals in Tokyo average JPY 5,692 per tatami mat (畳, a room-size unit counted in tatami mats), against JPY 3,403 nationwide. The first figure comes from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s statistics bureau and the second from the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The two are defined differently, so do not divide one by the other to get a multiple. Part of the gap between cities in average monthly rent may come from differences in the homes themselves, so it should not be read as a rent gap for the same kind of apartment.

Vacancy: Does a Low Vacancy Rate Mean Rental Homes Stay Let?

Not necessarily. The vacancy rate (空き家率) is the share of all vacant homes in the total housing stock. It includes homes for sale, holiday homes and every other kind of empty home, so it is not a rental vacancy rate. A home left empty for letting is classed in the statistics as a vacant rental home (賃貸用の空き家). The official figures give only the number of such homes; no “rental vacancy rate” is published.

This article estimates a rough indicator as vacant rental homes divided by (rented homes plus vacant rental homes). The result is about 14.4% for Tokyo’s 23 wards, about 19.9% for Osaka city, about 10.4% for Fukuoka city and about 18.6% nationwide. It is only a rough measure. The denominator includes public housing and employer-provided housing (給与住宅, kyuyo jutaku, homes a company or agency provides to its staff), and the count of vacant rental homes does not distinguish homes being actively marketed from homes that have been hard to let for a long time.

Osaka prefecture and Osaka city point in different directions, so read them separately. In Osaka prefecture the number of vacant homes fell for the first time since the survey began in 1948, and vacant rental homes fell 3.9% from 2018, while the national figure rose 2.5% over the same period. In Osaka city the number of vacant homes rose from 2018, but the total housing stock rose by more, so the vacancy rate fell by 1.0 percentage point.

Who Rents: What Do the Share of Renters and Single-Person Households Show?

In all three cities the share of households that rent is higher than the national 35.0%. On Oct 1, 2023 it was 53.9% in Osaka city, about 52.0% (estimated) in Tokyo’s 23 wards and about 59.5% (estimated) in Fukuoka city. Here “renting” includes all rental housing, such as public housing and employer-provided housing. Within that, privately owned rental housing (民営借家, minkan shakuya) comes to 2,262,400 homes in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 657,900 in Osaka city and 422,100 in Fukuoka city.

In the 2025 national census (国勢調査), single-person households (単独世帯) made up more than half of all households in each of the three cities, against 41.4% nationwide. These shares include people who live in homes they own, so they are not the share of single people among tenants. They describe the make-up of households in a city; they cannot tell you who will rent a particular unit.

New Supply and Population: If People Move In, Will the Home Let?

Population inflow and new rental housing need to be read together. In 2025, only seven prefectures in Japan had more people moving in from elsewhere in Japan than moving out (転入超過), and Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka were all among them. Tokyo’s net inflow of 65,219 people was the largest but narrowed by 14,066 from the previous year; Osaka’s was 15,667, narrowed by 1,181; Fukuoka’s was 5,136, widened by 976. These figures count only moves within Japan; people arriving from abroad are counted separately and are not included.

On new rental housing, nationwide starts of rental homes built for letting (貸家) in 2025 were 324,991, down 5.0% from the year before and the third consecutive annual fall. In the Tokyo metropolitan area (which includes Tokyo) starts fell 0.9%, and in the Kinki region (which includes Osaka) they fell 0.2%. Starts for each of the three cities are in the table above; year-on-year comparisons for the individual cities were not obtained.

The housing starts statistic counts rental homes newly built for letting. Condominiums sold in lots and second-hand apartments bought to rent out are not included. Population and new supply are both city-level figures, and neither converts into how long a particular unit will stand empty or what rent it can achieve.

Prices and Rents: If Land Prices Rise, Will Rents Follow?

Not necessarily in step. Residential land prices on Jan 1, 2026 were higher than a year earlier: 9.0% in Tokyo’s 23 wards, 6.5% in Osaka city and 7.0% in Fukuoka city, against 2.1% nationwide. This is the price of land at benchmark sites. It is not the sale price of an apartment, and it is not rent.

Rent changes come from a different statistic. In August 2026, the private rent index for Tokyo’s 23-ward area was up 2.0% from a year earlier (mid-month preliminary figure), and nationwide it was up 0.7%. This index mainly reflects existing tenancies, not the going rate for new lettings. As for apartment prices, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) real estate price index (不動産価格指数) publishes only an index, not prices, and every release originally scheduled from April 2026 onward (covering months from January 2026) has been postponed, with new dates not set. As of Sep 30, 2026, the latest published month was December 2025.

When purchase prices rise and rents do not rise by as much, the gross yield calculated with the same formula falls. So when comparing cities, look at rents and prices separately first, rather than only at the percentage you get by dividing one by the other.

Why Can’t a Gross Yield Be Compared Directly Across Cities?

Because the formula contains only two numbers: expected annual rental income and the acquisition price. The differences between cities in vacancy, costs and price movements are not in the formula.

There is no official city figure to check against. Official statistics provide no yield by city. Dividing an average rent by some average home price does not give an official yield either. City yields on the market come from private websites, agents or research firms, each calculating in its own way.

The numerator is an “expected” rent. Japan’s industry code for real estate advertising (不動産の表示に関する公正競争規約) requires that when a yield is shown, it must state that the expected rent may not actually be received. The formula does not automatically deduct months when the unit stands empty. The share of vacant rental homes in the table above ranges from about 10.4% to about 19.9% across the three cities, but it is only a rough indicator and cannot be turned directly into the number of empty months one unit will have in a year.

It is a figure before deductions. The same code also requires that the yield be stated as a figure before taxes and the costs of keeping the property. As of September 2026 there is no official, uniform method for the net yield after those costs, and each firm deducts different items. The same management fee and repair reserve (修繕積立金) take a larger share of the rent on a lower-rent unit. Two units in two cities with the same gross yield can leave different amounts after costs.

Ask what the denominator covers. Whether the acquisition price includes the agent’s fee and taxes paid on purchase has to be checked for every ad. If two units use different scopes for the denominator, their percentages cannot be compared.

How Do You Calculate It Yourself?

Use the same formula as the advertisements: annual rental income divided by acquisition price gives the gross yield. When comparing units in two cities, apply the same basis for the numerator and the denominator on both sides. For the numerator, use the monthly rent in the actual tenancy multiplied by 12 (if the unit is not yet let, know that the figure is only an expected rent). For the denominator, use the same price scope. Then, on both sides, deduct the same set of items for that building: management fee, repair reserve, annual holding taxes and rental management fees. After that, allow separately for the months the unit might stand empty.

**Example: Mr. Zhang, living in Taipei, comparing two advertisements**

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Mr. Zhang has two advertisements in hand, one for a unit in Tokyo’s 23 wards and one in Fukuoka city, and the two show different yield percentages. He first asks both agents: is this a gross or a net yield; is the rent the actual rent under the current lease or an expected rent; and what costs does the acquisition price include.

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Next, he asks each side for that building’s management fee, repair reserve and any plan to raise them later, and recalculates both units himself with the same set of items. He uses the city statistics only as background: the estimated share of vacant rental homes is about 14.4% in Tokyo’s 23 wards and about 10.4% in Fukuoka city, both rough indicators and not the vacancy rate of these two units. What he does is convert the two units to one method of calculation and then compare them, rather than comparing the percentages printed on the two ads.

Which Claims Deserve Caution?

• “This is the official yield for Tokyo (or Fukuoka)”: As of September 2026, official statistics do not publish a city rental yield. First find out where the figure comes from and how it was calculated.
• “Fukuoka city’s vacancy rate is only about 8%, so rentals won’t stand empty”: The roughly 8.4% is the share of all vacant homes, estimated by Zagdim from official household counts. It is not a rental vacancy rate, and how long a particular unit stays empty depends on the unit itself.
• “Tokyo land prices rose 9% in a year, so rents will rise too”: The published land price is the price of land. Rent changes come from the private rent index (up 2.0% year on year in Tokyo’s 23-ward area in August 2026). These are different statistics and cannot be mapped onto each other.
• “Osaka’s vacant homes are falling”: What fell is the number of vacant homes in Osaka prefecture. In Osaka city the number rose from 2018, and only the vacancy rate fell.
• “The average rent is JPY 60,000-odd, so this unit will fetch that”: The average monthly rent is an average of existing tenancies, including those paying JPY 0. It is not the going rate for this unit.
• “Population keeps moving into Tokyo, so there will always be tenants”: In 2025 Tokyo’s net inflow was smaller than the year before, and it counts only moves within Japan. City population figures cannot explain how a particular unit will let.

What to Do Next

While you are still choosing a city, use the table above for background and note the reference date of every figure. The rent, vacancy and renter-share figures come from the Housing and Land Survey, which is held every five years; the next survey is in 2028.

When you reach a specific unit, you can keep comparing if the seller or agent can explain whether the yield is gross or net, whether the rent is actual or expected, and what the price includes, and can provide that building’s management fee and repair reserve. If they cannot, or if they treat a land price rise or a city’s average rent as evidence for that unit, stop and check first.

For the fuller picture behind yield, including where tenants come from, the costs involved, whether you can run short-term rentals and how rent is taxed, see the pillar article, “Before Looking at Japanese Rental Yield, Understand Tenant Sources, Vacancy, Management Costs and City Differences” (pillar article on Japanese rental yield).

Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka Rental Comparison FAQ

Can I trust claims online that Fukuoka’s property yields are higher than Tokyo’s?

As of September 2026, Japan’s official statistics do not publish rental yields by city. Figures online come from private sources, with differing methods and deductions. To compare, recalculate the two units with the same formula and the same set of costs, and look at rent, vacancy and land prices separately.

Can I use Tokyo’s 23-ward average rent of about JPY 100,000 to calculate a yield?

No. JPY 99,618 is the average of existing tenancies as reported by residents on Oct 1, 2023. It includes households paying JPY 0, excludes management fees, and covers homes of varying age and size. It is not the asking rent for a new letting, and it cannot be divided by an average home price to give a yield.

If I buy to let, is a city with a low vacancy rate less likely to stand empty?

Not necessarily. The vacancy rate includes homes for sale, holiday homes and every other empty home, so it is not a rental vacancy rate. The estimated share of vacant rental homes, based on official household counts, is about 10.4% in Fukuoka city and about 19.9% in Osaka city, and these are only rough indicators. How long a particular unit stays empty depends on the unit itself.

Glossary

• Rental yield (利回り, riyawari): in advertisements, the ratio of expected annual rental income to the acquisition price, before costs.
• Gross yield (表面利回り, hyomen riyawari): the rental yield with no costs deducted.
• Net yield (実質利回り, jisshitsu riyawari): the yield after deducting management fees, repair reserves, taxes and similar costs. There is no uniform official method.
• Housing and Land Survey (住宅・土地統計調査, Jutaku-Tochi Tokei Chosa): a housing survey held every five years by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The rent, vacancy and rental-home counts in this article come from the Oct 1, 2023 round.
• Vacancy rate (空き家率, akiya-ritsu): the share of all vacant homes in the total housing stock, including homes for sale and holiday homes. It is not a rental vacancy rate.
• Vacant rental home (賃貸用の空き家, chintai-yo no akiya): a home left empty for letting, whether new or second-hand.
• Privately owned rental housing (民営借家, minkan shakuya): rental housing other than public housing, UR and public corporation housing, and employer-provided housing.
• Employer-provided housing (給与住宅, kyuyo jutaku): housing that a company or agency provides to its employees.
• Rental housing starts (貸家, kashiya): in the housing starts statistics, new homes built for letting.
• Net in-migration (転入超過, tennyu choka): more people moving in than moving out over a year. The figures here count only moves within Japan.
• Published land price (地価公示, chika koji): benchmark-site land prices published by MLIT. The 2026 (Reiwa 8) figures used here have a price date of Jan 1, 2026.
• Single-person household (単独世帯, tandoku setai): a household of one person.
• Tokyo’s 23 wards (特別区部, tokubetsu-kubu): the 23 special wards of Tokyo, excluding the Tama area and the islands.

Notes on the Data

• The data was checked on Sep 30, 2026, against official statistics and documents from the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, MLIT, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s statistics bureau, Osaka Prefecture, Osaka city and Fukuoka city. Only official statistics are used for market figures, each with its survey reference date. Yields, vacancy rates and rents from private websites, agents and research firms are not used.
• The following conclusions are drawn from official documents, and no official document states them in one sentence. “Official statistics do not publish a rental yield for Tokyo, Osaka or Fukuoka” rests on a review of the real estate price index, the 2026 published land prices and the 2023 Housing and Land Survey (and the housing starts statistics and consumer price index), none of which contains a yield statistic. It does not mean every document has been checked. “There is no uniform method for the net yield” rests on the fact that MLIT’s guideline for master-lease businesses lists the gross and net names side by side and gives no formula.
• The following figures were calculated by Zagdim from official household counts and rounded to one decimal place; they are not official published ratios: the share of vacant rental homes in each area; the vacancy rates for Tokyo’s 23 wards and Fukuoka city; the share of renting households for Tokyo’s 23 wards, Fukuoka prefecture and Fukuoka city; and the share of single-person households for Tokyo prefecture, Tokyo’s 23 wards and Fukuoka city. The 58.7% single-person share for Osaka city is a figure published by the city government.
• The reference dates in the table differ: the housing survey figures are for Oct 1, 2023, the census for Oct 1, 2025, housing starts and population movement for the whole of 2025, land prices for Jan 1, 2026, and the rent index for August 2026. They should not be divided into each other or combined. Tokyo’s per-tatami rent is from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s statistics bureau and the national per-tatami rent from the Statistics Bureau; they are defined differently.
• Data not obtained or likely to change: for the MLIT real estate price index, every release originally scheduled from April 2026 onward has been postponed with new dates not set, and as of Sep 30, 2026 the latest published month is December 2025; private rent indexes for Osaka and Fukuoka, city-level net in-migration for Osaka city and Fukuoka city, and year-on-year comparisons of 2025 rental housing starts for each city were not obtained. The September 2026 figure for the private rent index in Tokyo’s 23-ward area is scheduled for release on Oct 2, 2026.

Have a question about this guide? Leave a comment below, or ask Zagdim directly.

Sources

• Statistics Bureau, MIC – Summary of Results, 2023 Housing and Land Survey, Basic Tabulation on Housing and Households (Final)
• Statistics Bureau (e-Stat) – 2023 Housing and Land Survey, Table 1-1-1, Housing by Presence of Resident Households
• Statistics Bureau (e-Stat) – 2023 Housing and Land Survey, Table 3-1-1
• Statistics Bureau (e-Stat) – 2023 Housing and Land Survey, Table 112-2-2
• Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of General Affairs, Statistics Division – 令和５年住宅・土地統計調査（確報）結果の概要
• Osaka Prefecture Statistics Division – 令和５年住宅・土地統計調査 結果の概要（大阪府）
• Osaka City Urban Planning Bureau – 令和５年住宅・土地統計調査結果（確報）＜大阪市＞
• Fukuoka City – 令和5年住宅・土地統計調査 基本集計結果
• MLIT – 建築着工統計調査報告（令和7年計）
• MLIT (e-Stat) – 住宅着工統計 2025年 第15表 着工住宅：都道府県別、工事別、利用関係別
• Statistics Bureau – 2025年基準 消費者物価指数 全国 2026年8月分
• Statistics Bureau – 2025年基準 消費者物価指数 東京都区部 2026年8月分（中旬速報値）
• Statistics Bureau – 住民基本台帳人口移動報告 2025年結果
• MLIT – 令和8年地価公示の概要
• MLIT – 不動産価格指数
• Statistics Bureau – 令和７年国勢調査 人口等基本集計結果 結果の概要
• Osaka City Urban Planning Bureau – 令和7年国勢調査における大阪市の人口等基本集計結果
• Statistics Bureau – 令和７年国勢調査 都道府県・市区町村別の主な結果
• Fair Trade Conference for Real Estate Associations – 不動産の表示に関する公正競争規約・同施行規則（規約集）
• MLIT – サブリース事業に係る適正な業務のためのガイドライン

Important Notice

This article is a general compilation of information. It is not individual investment, legal or tax advice, and it does not forecast rents or yields for any city or property. The data was checked on Sep 30, 2026. Statistics are updated as new surveys and releases appear, so rely on the latest publications of the relevant Japanese authorities.