Teiki Shakuya: The Fixed-Term Lease Every Guesthouse Operator in Japan Should Understand
The first time a landlord’s agent handed me a lease for a property I wanted to run as a guesthouse, I noticed the contract was labeled 定期借家契約 (teiki shakuya keiyaku) — a fixed-term lease — instead of the standard 普通借家契約 (futsu shakuya keiyaku), a regular lease. I’d signed regular leases for offices before and assumed this was the same paperwork with a different name. It isn’t, and the difference matters enormously if your business depends on holding that lease for years.