The 5-Year Capital Gains Cliff: What It Costs to Sell a Japan Short-Term Rental Early
Everyone talks about entry: how to find the property, how to finance it, how to get the yield numbers right. In our experience, far less gets said about the exit, and that’s a problem, because in Japan the tax bill on selling a short-term rental can swing by more than 19 percentage points depending on a single number — how many years you’ve owned it.
I’ve been through this calculation for our own properties and for owners who ask us to help them think through timing a sale. The short version: the exit is not a footnote to your investment plan, it’s a variable you should be modeling from day one.