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Comment by greggman | Hacker News Reader

The fact that it's an upfront payment makes it hard but I just looked at it as pre-payment of rent. 2 Year Contract Rent = X/26. Pay 2/26X to start Plus 1/26X a month for 24 months.

Not sure what a guarantor fee is but a guarantor is no different than a co-signer in America which lots of young people need. It's slightly different in Japan in that pretty much everyone needs it but as a foreigner with no Japanese credit history whatsoever it didn't seem unreasonable to be required to have a guarantor. Fortunately my company co-signed the first time and a friend's father the second.

Then, there's plenty of apartments with none of those fees. Here's several just around 1 station for as little as $500 a month

http://zero.chintai.net/double/tokyo/ensen/102050012/

There's thousands of other stations all with places to live at similar prices.

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but a guarantor is no different than a co-signer in America which lots of young people need

Respectfully, they are quite different. A co-signer is generally used only if the first party can't pay rent. A guarantor is used regardless of ability to pay and is explicitly designed to make sure that only people with appropriate social status are allowed to live in the building.

Not sure what a guarantor fee

If you're unable to come up with a Japanese company to guarantee you because of social ties, you can pay a company to do so. (This is, ahem, often necessary but insufficient to pass the must-be-at-least-this-social-status-to-rent bar.)

It's basically a surety bond: they promise my landlord one month's rent if I skip out. This bond costs me precisely one month's rent and is nonrefundable, much like an insurance premium. (Warren Buffet just said "Eff me that's the most profitable insurance policy in history.")

  This is, ahem, often necessary but insufficient to pass the must-be-at-least-this-social-status-to-rent bar.

So sometimes even paying someone isn't enough?

Right. Some landlords/management companies don't accept guarantor companies.

I work for an insurance company that sells that kind of surety, and it IS the most profitable product :)

I wouldn't call them quite different. Both are a 2nd party guaranteeing the rent and damage compensation. The other differences are minor.

An other difference is that they specifically ask for a Japanese guarantor. I had for guarantor a Frenchman who've been living in Japan for 10 years, spoke Japanese, had a full time job at a public research institute, but it was very hard to find an agency who accepted to sign a lease with him as a guarantor because he wasn't Japanese.

The argument with the agent was often the same: - because if there's a problem, communication will be hard - but he speaks Japanese! And me too, as you can see! - yes, it would be fine for me, but the landlord wouldn't accept!

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