How Foreigners Actually Get a Mortgage in Japan: Work Visa, PR, or Non-Resident

TL;DR: Your visa status, not your nationality, decides whether you get a Japanese mortgage and on what terms. The interest rate is the headline; the down payment is the deal. There are three real tracks: permanent residents borrow like locals (10-20% down, best rates), work-visa holders borrow from a narrower bank list (often 30-50% down, language sometimes required), and people living abroad have a handful of investment-style lenders at 50-70% loan-to-value. Figure out which track you’re on before you fall in love with a listing.

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A separate piece on this site covers why a Japanese mortgage is worth chasing — the roughly 4-point rate gap over the U.S. that makes leverage here an edge. This one is the mechanics: how a foreigner actually gets approved, sorted by the only variable that matters to an underwriter, which is your residency status.

I run this conversation with buyers every week. The single most common mistake is assuming “can foreigners get a mortgage in Japan” has one answer. It has three. Find yours.

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The One Question That Sorts Everyone: Your Residency Status

Forget your passport. A Japanese bank’s first filter is your relationship to Japan, in this order:

• Permanent resident (eijuken) or spouse of a Japanese national — treated, for lending purposes, almost exactly like a citizen.
• Long-term visa holder living in Japan — work visa, engineer/specialist, Highly Skilled Professional, business manager. You live here, you pay tax here, but you don’t have PR yet.
• Non-resident — you live abroad. Under Japan’s foreign-exchange rules (FEFTA), “non-resident” broadly means your principal home has been outside Japan for more than six months, or you have no residence here at all (directional, as of writing).

Each tier is a different lending universe — different banks, different down payments, different rates. Almost every other requirement (stable income, clean credit, a property the bank likes) sits on top of this.

Most foreign buyers walk in fixated on the interest rate. That’s the wrong first question. The variable rate gap between the best and worst foreign-buyer profiles is maybe a point or two. The down payment gap is the difference between 0% and 50% of the purchase price — on a 60-million-yen apartment, that’s the difference between needing 6 million yen of cash and needing 30 million. Japanese banks underwrite a foreigner’s residency status before they underwrite the bricks. Pretend you’re a tier above where you actually sit, and you’ll waste weeks on lenders who were never going to fund you. Every figure below is the directional reality as of writing (mid-2026) — a starting point for your own pre-qualification, not a quote. So we’ll take the tracks one at a time.

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Track 1: Permanent Resident — You Borrow Like a Local

If you hold eijuken, or you’re married to a Japanese national, the door is wide open. You can approach the megabanks (MUFG, Mizuho, SMBC, Resona), the net banks (SBI Sumishin, au Jibun Bank, Sony Bank), foreigner-friendly names like SBI Shinsei and SMBC Prestia, and the government-backed Flat 35 long-fixed program. Down payments run the normal local range of roughly 10-20%, and strong profiles can go to roughly 0-10% down, i.e. 90-100% loan-to-value. You reach the lowest advertised rates — variable pricing well under 1% at the most aggressive lenders, roughly 0.3-0.8%, with the long-fixed Flat 35 in the low-3% range as of June 2026 (directional, as of writing). That’s ten-plus lender options. This is the track everyone quotes when they say “Japan has the cheapest money in the developed world.” It’s true — for this track.

The underwriting is conservative but readable. Rough guardrails I see hold: banks lend around 6-8x annual income, want total debt payments under about 30-35% of gross, and offer terms up to 35 years that must finish by roughly age 80. Hit the ratios with documented income and the loan tends to follow.

Honest caveat: PR opens the menu, but you still have to qualify on income and job stability like anyone else. The status removes the foreigner penalty; it doesn’t manufacture a salary. If you’re on the PR track and not yet over the line, this table is the clearest financial argument I can give you for finishing the process.

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Track 2: Work Visa, No PR — The Real Foreigner Track

This is where most of my buyers actually sit, and where the internet’s advice gets sloppy. You can absolutely get a mortgage on a work visa without permanent residency — but from a shorter list of banks, usually with a bigger down payment, and sometimes with a Japanese-language requirement.

The names that come up repeatedly for non-PR residents: SMBC Prestia, SBI Shinsei, Tokyo Star Bank, Suruga, AEON Bank, au Jibun Bank, and specialist lenders like Yen Loans K.K. (directional). Prestia and Shinsei are the two I steer English-speakers toward first — Prestia offers English support and doesn’t require a guarantor; Shinsei will lend to a foreigner on a valid residence card who can show a couple of years of Japanese work history and reliable income.

From the desk — The single most common mistake I see is a buyer who landed in Tokyo eight months ago quoting me the 0.4% variable rate his Japanese colleague got. That rate is real — it just isn’t his. He’s a recent arrival reading the permanent resident’s brochure. The kindest thing I can do is reset the down payment expectation on day one, because the deal that falls apart at the financing stage costs everyone a month.

What to expect on terms:

• Down payment: commonly 30-50% for non-PR residents, though stronger profiles and certain banks land closer to 20% (directional). Budget for 30% and treat anything less as upside.
• Rate: typically a touch higher than the PR best-case — think the ~0.8-1.4% band rather than the sub-0.5% headlines (directional).
• Time in Japan: most want to see at least 1-2 years of continuous employment and tax filings here.

Within this track, the banks draw a line at roughly three years on the ground — and the down payment moves with it.

Long-term residents (work or spouse visa, 3+ years)

You don’t have PR, but you’ve been here a while on a work or spouse visa with a stable job. This is the most common profile among foreign buyers who actually close, and the banks know how to price you.

• Down payment / LTV: typically 20-30% down (70-80% LTV).
• Rate: variable roughly 0.8-1.4%; fixed options broadly similar to residents depending on lender.
• Lenders: a realistic shortlist of three to five — SMBC Prestia (the most English-friendly and explicitly does not require PR), SBI Shinsei, Resona, and a few others.
• Underwriting: income usually 3-5 million yen-plus, two-plus years with the same employer strongly preferred, borrowing around 4-6x income.

A Japanese spouse as co-borrower meaningfully strengthens this file. So does a clean, salaried, documented income history. Banks here reward the boring profile — long tenure, steady pay, no gaps.

Recent arrivals (under ~3 years in Japan)

You have a valid residency card but a short track record on the ground. The door is open, but narrower.

• Down payment / LTV: 30-50% down (50-70% LTV).
• Rate: variable roughly 0.8-1.4%, sometimes with a 0.3-0.5% premium for the thin history.
• Lenders: often just one or two realistic names; Resona is frequently the most flexible on shorter tenure and has notably low income thresholds.
• Lever: a Japanese spouse or co-borrower can move you toward the 3+ year terms faster than time alone.

Honest caveat: the under-three-years buyer often gets a better outcome by waiting twelve to eighteen months to clear an employer-tenure and residency-history threshold than by forcing a high-down-payment deal now. Run both scenarios before you commit cash.

A practical lever: the Highly Skilled Professional (HSP) visa can fast-track you to PR — one year of residence at 80 points, three years at 70 (directional). If you’re close, getting PR first can be worth more than any rate you negotiate today, because it moves you to Track 1 entirely.

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Track 3: Living Abroad — Possible, But It’s an Investment Loan

If you don’t live in Japan and don’t hold a residency card, the honest truth is most domestic banks won’t touch you. A handful of lenders do non-resident loans, but treat them as investment financing, not homeowner financing: loan-to-value capped around 50-70%, pricing closer to commercial-loan territory, and a heavier document burden (directional). Tokyo Star Bank runs a dedicated non-resident real-estate loan program, typically financing around 50% of the price — so plan for a 50% down payment — at rates well above the resident menu (think mid-single digits, directional). Many overseas buyers in this tier simply pay cash, or finance against assets back home, because the math on a half-leveraged Tokyo asset at a higher rate often beats the friction of a Japanese non-resident loan. Other alternatives: private-banking facilities for high-net-worth clients (often 100-million-yen-plus relationships), or developer financing on new builds. Most non-resident purchases close as cash deals — don’t build your timeline assuming a cheap yen mortgage will appear.

One compliance item you cannot skip: since April 1, 2026, non-resident buyers must file a Bank of Japan FEFTA report (Form 22) within 20 days of acquiring property — the old residential exemption was removed, so it applies whether the place is for your own use, rental, or pure investment (directional, as of writing). It’s a notification, not a permission gate, but missing it is a self-inflicted wound. Your judicial scrivener (shiho shoshi) and agent should flag it; confirm they have.

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Why the Rate Story Changed in 2026 (and Why LTV Matters More)

Here’s the part that reframes the whole “cheap Japan money” narrative. The Bank of Japan has been normalizing, and long rates have moved. The Flat 35 long-fixed program — which sat near 2% in early 2026 — climbed past 3% for the first time in roughly seventeen years, hitting around 3.2% in June 2026 (directional). Variable rates remain very low for now, but the floor is lifting.

That still beats the U.S. 30-year fixed, parked around 6.5% as of mid-2026 (directional) — so the cross-border spread is real. But it’s narrower than the 2% headline implied, and it’s drifting the wrong way. The durable edge for a foreign buyer in 2026 isn’t a rock-bottom rate you may not even qualify for; it’s access to high LTV at a low absolute rate — and that access is the thing residency status controls. Optimize for the track you can reach, not the rate you read about.

One-line caveat: variable rates in Japan reset on a schedule with payment-adjustment caps, but “capped” is not “fixed.” If a rising BOJ keeps you up at night, pay the premium and lock the fixed rate.

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The Document Pack — Build It Before You Apply

Regardless of track, a Japanese lender wants to see a clean, complete file. Approval delays are almost always missing paperwork, not rejections. Have ready:

• Residence card (zairyu card) and passport — for resident tracks.
• Income proof: last 1-3 years of withholding slips (gensen choshu hyo) or tax returns; for the self-employed, two to three years of filings.
• Employment verification and, often, length-of-service confirmation.
• My Number (your tax ID) and proof of current address, plus recent bank statements.
• The property documents — the bank underwrites the asset too, so the listing, registration (toki) info, and floor plan matter.

Bring this organized and you signal exactly the low-risk profile underwriters reward. Show up improvising and you’ll burn weeks.

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What This Means For Your Next Move

The buyers who close cleanly do one thing first: they confirm their financing track before they tour a single property. So before you offer on anything, pin down your track and get a pre-approval (jizen shinsa) in hand. It tells you your real budget, proves to sellers you can close, and — in Japan’s relationship-driven offer process — makes your bid the easy “yes.” Work-visa buyers especially should line up two lenders, because the second quote is your leverage on the first — Prestia or Resona are the usual first calls for non-PR residents; Tokyo Star for non-residents. The buyers who stall fall in love with a listing, then discover they’re a 50%-down buyer who budgeted for 10%.

If you’re not sure which track you’re on, or whether chasing PR first changes your numbers, that’s exactly the conversation to have with a licensed agent before you waste a viewing trip. Talk to us — we’ll map your status to the right lenders and a realistic down payment, then run the financing scenario alongside the property. Start by modeling the loan against a target yield in our tools, and if you’re weighing where to deploy the leverage, compare wards on price, yield, and liquidity before you commit.

Sources: Migaku — Japan Mortgages for Foreigners 2026, Japan Real Estate Analytics — Mortgage Guide, Japan Real Estate Analytics — FEFTA 2026 Reporting, Tokyo Portfolio — Housing Loans for Foreigners