New-Build vs Resale Condos in Japan: What You Can Check Before Buying

Guide

Many new-build condos in Japan (shinchiku manshon) go on sale before construction is finished, so you judge them from a model room, floor plans and an artist's rendering, and the building has no management track record yet; with a resale condo (chūko manshon) you can walk through the actual unit and use the owners' association's records to see how the building has been managed. If you want to see the real thing and its management history before deciding, start with resale; if you can wait for completion and put weight on the latest standards and equipment, a new build bought before completion is also an option (information as of August 18, 2026).^[1]^[2]^[3] When you compare Japan condos for sale by price, keep the two sets of statistics apart: the new-build average is the developers' asking price, the resale average is the closed price, and the two cannot be compared directly.^[4]

"Shinchiku" and "chūko" in Japanese property sales

In this article, a "new-build condo" is a unit that a developer (bunjō gaisha) has built and is selling for the first time. Some are sold before the building is completed (what is often called "off-plan" elsewhere), and some after. A "resale condo" is a unit that someone has lived in or owned and that is now being sold again.

The consumer handbook on reading property advertisements published by the National Federation of Real Estate Fair Trade Councils explains that many new homes and new condos go on sale before construction is complete, a practice known in Japan as aota-uri, and that ads for unfinished properties show the scheduled month of completion. The handbook also states that "shinchiku" in an ad means a property built less than 1 year ago that nobody has lived in. Under this definition, a unit completed more than 1 year ago falls outside "shinchiku" as used in ads, which differs slightly from how this article uses "new build."^[1]

What you can see before you buy

The first thing to compare is whether you can see the actual unit you are buying.

	New build bought before completion	Resale condo
The unit	You see a model room (moderu rūmu, a furnished show unit) and floor plans; the model room may differ in layout and size from the unit you are buying, and the equipment shown is often an option rather than standard^[5]	Once a viewing is arranged, you can see the unit you are buying itself^[2]
Daylight, airflow and view	The building is not up yet, so you can only imagine them; the artist's rendering (kansei yosōzu) may show the surroundings looking better than they really are^[2]^[1]	You can check the view from the windows, the airflow and the daylight on site^[2]^[6]
Building standards and performance	Built to the latest standards, with new technology and performance, but without a long record of actual use as a home^[7]	Wear and deterioration from age; equipment such as the water heater and the plumbing in the kitchen and bathroom may be close to replacement^[8]
How the building is run	Nobody has moved in yet, so there is no management track record^[3]	You can see the impression the entrance gives and where the garbage area and bicycle parking are, and ask whether there have been management disputes^[6]

Fudosan Japan, the consumer site of the Real Estate Transaction Promotion Center, explains that when you decide on a new home before it is finished, the daylight, the view, the position of your windows relative to the neighbors' windows and balconies, and how the utility poles and overhead wires on the street in front will look can only be imagined; with a resale home, you can check the actual living space and its surroundings one item at a time.^[2] The same site notes that new homes are built to the latest standards and have new technology and performance; the one thing they lack is "a track record as a home": years of standing up to the weather while actually being lived in.^[7]

New or old, the surroundings can change: a building may later go up next door and cut the daylight and airflow.^[1] Fudosan Japan's viewing advice also suggests visiting the area at different times of day and on both weekdays and weekends, and points out that on a rainy day you can spot where water pools or drains poorly.^[5] If you live overseas and cannot easily make several trips, you can ask your agent for photos or video taken at different times; this fills part of the gap.

New builds sold after completion. A new build that is already finished can be viewed much like a resale condo, with the actual unit and the view from its windows in front of you.^[5] How much of a management track record it has depends on when the building as a whole came into use and what management records are available.

Weak points of resale condos. A resale home has wear and deterioration from years of use and may also have individual damage, and much of it is out of sight, inside walls and under floors, so what the seller and the agent can tell you has limits. Resale homes are often priced lower than new ones, but you generally need to allow for renovation (rifōmu).^[8] You can also choose only from the units that happen to be on the market at the time.

When the unit is handed over

A new build bought before completion is handed over once the building is finished.^[9] Ads show the "scheduled completion month" (kansei yotei nengetsu) and the "month handover becomes possible" (hikiwatashi kanō nengetsu). The handbook explains that the two are often the same, but you can actually move in only from the handover month onward, so confirm it before planning your move.^[1] If you intend to rent the unit out, count the earliest start of a tenancy from that date as well.

With a resale condo the building already exists. Ask your agent when handover can take place, for example whether the seller is still living in the unit.

What documents you can get: before completion, the plan is still a "draft"

When you buy a unit in a Japanese condominium, besides the price you normally pay a monthly management fee (kanrihi) and a monthly repair reserve contribution (shūzen tsumitatekin, money saved each month for planned future repairs to shared parts such as the exterior walls, roof and elevators).^[10] The building is run by the owners' association (kanri kumiai), made up of the people who bought the individual units (kubun shoyūsha, unit owners).^[11] The difference between new and resale lies in whether documents let you check how that money will be collected in the future and how it has been used in the past.

New build: you look at the developer's draft plan. According to MLIT's Guidelines for Preparing Long-Term Repair Plans, for a new condominium the developer uses the guidelines as a reference to prepare a draft long-term repair plan and sets the repair reserve amount based on it (including the shūzen tsumitate kikin, a lump-sum repair reserve collected at purchase). The draft is later handed over to the owners' association, and prospective buyers can check it against the guidelines.^[3]

The same guidelines note that the draft plan and the repair reserve amount are sometimes adopted at the owners' association's inaugural general meeting, held soon after handover. When you buy before completion, then, there are no general meeting minutes or income and expenditure records for the building to look at yet.^[3]

Ask how the repair reserve will be collected. MLIT's Guidelines on Repair Reserve Funds for Condominiums point out that at the sales stage the developer generally presents a long-term repair plan and a repair reserve amount to buyers, but that in some cases the initial monthly amount has been set very low. Buyers need to check whether the amount was worked out with the "equal accumulation method" (kintō tsumitate hōshiki, saving evenly from the start) or with a method that assumes higher contributions later, such as the "graduated increase method" (dankai zōgaku tsumitate hōshiki, starting low and raising contributions in steps). If it is the latter, think about whether it fits your own future financial plans. The guidelines also note that even under the equal accumulation method, contributions may need to rise when the long-term repair plan is reviewed.^[10] Some buildings also collect a lump-sum repair reserve (shūzen tsumitate kikin) at purchase.^[10]

The guidelines, revised in June 2024, added a reference for how steeply a graduated plan should rise: taking the monthly amount under the equal accumulation method as the base, the plan's initial amount should be at least 0.6x the base and its final amount no more than 1.1x.^[10] The reference aims to have increases completed early and to move plans toward the equal accumulation method; the guidelines state that it does not restrict large increases when a plan is reviewed, for example because construction costs have risen.^[10] You can ask the agent or the developer to explain how the building's draft plan compares with this reference.

MLIT's fiscal 2023 general survey of condominiums (covering the owners' associations that responded) found that, among associations with a repair reserve system, the share that used the graduated increase method at the time of sale was 82.3% among buildings completed in 2020 or later (62 responses) and 11.4% among buildings completed in 1974 or earlier.^[12] When buying a new build, check first whether it uses graduated increases and what the schedule of increases is; the same applies to resale condos in fairly new buildings.

Resale condo: you look at the owners' association's records. MLIT's leaflet for buyers of resale condominiums lists management information you can obtain through the agent, such as the business of general meetings, the income and expenditure of the management fee and repair reserve accounts, whether the unit you are buying has arrears, any planned changes to the management fee and repair reserve, whether there is a long-term repair plan, and the history of past repairs. It also notes that some buildings can disclose only limited information.^[11]

Management track record: what to look at in a resale condo

The advantage of a resale condo is that a track record exists, but the record can be good or bad, and the survey results also differ by completion year.

The same survey shows that 30.1% of owners' associations overall had units with management fee or repair reserve arrears of 3 months or more: 48.4% among buildings completed in 1974 or earlier and 13.2% among those completed in 2020 or later.^[12] Overall, 7.3% of owners' associations had no long-term repair plan, rising to 23.1% among buildings completed in 1974 or earlier.^[12] These are shares across all buildings; for an individual building, look at its own records.

When you view a resale condo, look out for:

Whether there is a long-term repair plan, and whether repairs have been carried out as planned^[6]^[11]
Whether the exterior walls and shared corridors show obvious cracks or tilting, and how worn the equipment is^[5]^[8]
The year of completion. MLIT's checklist also lists the completion year as an item to check; ask your agent to explain how it relates to the seismic standards^[11]
If you want to know more about the building's condition, ask your agent whether a building condition survey (tatemono jōkyō chōsa, often called an "inspection") can be carried out. An architect who has completed a course run by a nationally registered body examines the main load-bearing structural parts and the parts that keep rainwater out, by visual checks, measurement and similar methods; the result does not mean the home is free of every defect.^[13]

Reading price statistics: asking prices and closed prices are two different measures

The table below sets published statistics for Japan's two largest metropolitan areas side by side. The new-build figures are first-half statistics for January–June 2026 and the resale figures are quarterly statistics for April–June 2026, the latest published as of this article. The periods differ, so the gaps in the table partly reflect that difference.^[14]^[15]^[16]^[17]

Area	New builds (January–June 2026, released for sale)	Resale condos (April–June 2026, closed sales)
Greater Tokyo (Tokyo and 3 neighboring prefectures)	7,989 units, average ¥101.35 million, ¥1.514 million per m²	11,853 sales, average ¥52.01 million, ¥831,300 per m², average building age 27.70 years
Tokyo's 23 wards (part of Greater Tokyo)	2,684 units, average ¥142.49 million, ¥2.226 million per m²	4,803 sales, average ¥75.74 million, ¥1,362,200 per m², average building age 26.43 years
Kinki region (Osaka, Kyoto and 4 prefectures)	7,329 units, average ¥54.53 million, ¥980,000 per m²	4,967 sales, average ¥32.86 million, ¥482,500 per m², average building age 28.75 years

Two different measures. The new-build figures come from the Real Estate Economic Institute, a private research firm, and are the average of the prices developers set for units released for sale during the period, not closed prices; the per-m² figures are based on each unit's exclusive floor area. The resale figures come from the real estate information networks (REINS) for East Japan and Kinki, and are averages of the properties reported as sold during the period.^[4] The average price per unit is also affected by unit size (resale condos sold in Greater Tokyo averaged 62.57 m²), so per-m² prices are the better basis for comparison.^[16] Both networks also note that system changes made from January 2025 onward may have affected the number of recorded sales.^[16]^[17]

Building age widens the gap as well. In East Japan REINS's analysis by building age, resale condos sold in Greater Tokyo in 2025 had an average age of 26.58 years, and 60.3% were over 20 years old; the closed price per m² was ¥1,436,400 for buildings 0–5 years old and ¥441,400 for buildings 31–35 years old.^[18] Buildings of different ages may also stand in different locations, so this gap is not necessarily caused by building age alone.

The difference between the new-build and resale averages therefore cannot be read as "how much more the same home costs new than used." All of these are past averages, and they do not indicate future prices. When you compare specific properties, ask your agent for closed-sale records from the same building or from buildings of similar age and location.

Which suits you: when the conclusion may change

Lean toward resale if you want to see the actual unit and the management records before deciding.
If you want to use or rent out the unit soon, check the handover date first, whether new or resale, and then compare.
Consider a new build bought before completion if you can wait until it is finished, put weight on the latest standards, equipment and layouts, and can accept two things: you cannot see the actual unit, and the management has no track record yet.
In between: a new build sold after completion lets you see the actual unit; a resale condo in a fairly new building has a few years of management records to review. How many records exist depends on how long the building as a whole has been in use.
When you may need to reconsider: a resale condo whose repair plan and reserves look weak, or a new build whose schedule of repair reserve increases does not fit your financial plans. Even if you love the unit, either can be a reason to think again.

This is the editors' summary; it does not address future price movements or investment results.

What to confirm with your agent or a professional

New build: the scheduled completion month and the month handover becomes possible; how the model room differs from the unit you are buying (layout, floor area, orientation, options)
New build: the content of the draft long-term repair plan, how the repair reserve is collected and the schedule of increases, and whether a lump-sum repair reserve (shūzen tsumitate kikin) is due at purchase
Resale: general meeting minutes; income and expenditure of the management fee and repair reserve and any planned changes to them; arrears for the unit and for the building as a whole; the long-term repair plan and repair history
Resale: how the completion year relates to the seismic standards, how long the equipment has been in use, whether renovation is needed, whether a building condition survey can be done, and when handover can take place (is the seller still living there?)
Both: future construction plans in the surrounding area, and what the neighborhood is like at different times of day
Contracts and money: matters relating to tetsukekin, what happens if handover is delayed, matters relating to keiyaku futekigō sekinin, loans, taxes (including consumption tax), and purchase costs such as the brokerage fee and renovation. Check these with your agent, a lender and a tax professional respectively; this article does not explain them

New build or resale: start from the same list

If you have not yet settled on new or resale, you can browse current listings to see how building age, area and layout are spread across what is on offer. When a unit stands out, send the checklist above with your first enquiry so the agent can start gathering the management and repair records before you decide.