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. 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. So we’ll take them 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), and the government-backed Flat 35 long-fixed program. Down payments run the normal local range of roughly 10-20%, and you reach the lowest advertised rates — variable pricing well under 1% at the most aggressive lenders, fixed around the 1-2% area (directional, as of writing).

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.

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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.

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.

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, 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). 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.

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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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.
• 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

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.

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