Housing Bureau

Outline of the Initiative promoting Time-Share Dwellings in Japan

  • While purchasing complete ownership of a dwelling might amount to several times one’s annual income, purchasing a real property right or any other right relating to the use of a specific time-share dwelling for a specified period of time each year could be quite affordable.

  • Time-share dwellings have become quite popular in foreign countries. For instance, around 4% of the households in the U.S. held a right-of-use of a time-share dwelling in 2007.
  • While the supply of time-share dwellings could promote multi-habitation, local tourism and housing-related investment, there are several problems related to consumer protection.
  • Therefore, in order to examine the need to promote time-share dwellings in Japan and to discover effective schemes to protect the rights of purchasers, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) initiated a Research Group on promoting the supply of time-share dwellings in May 2008.
  • In August 2008, MLIT issued a report summarizing the work of the Research Group (please refer to <http://www.mlit.go.jp/report/press/house03_hh_000004.html> for the report (only available in Japanese).
  • In fiscal year 2009, MLIT earmarked 15 million yen to support those who develop effective schemes for the provision of time-share dwellings, and called for proposals from May 20th to June 19th. Among the five proposals forthcoming, three were chosen by the evaluating committee.
  • The sponsors of the three proposals chosen developed model schemes to supply time-share dwellings and submitted their results at the end of fiscal year 2009. The main reports, model contracts, etc., which were submitted by these companies, as well as the evaluation of the results by the committee, can be downloaded from the MLIT homepage.
  • Moreover, one of the companies has proposed a model contract in English, which is intended to expand the marketing scope to foreign consumers, investors, etc., and to mitigating the seasonality impact of the domestic tourism market. For this model contract in English by Reproject Partners Co, Ltd, please refer to: http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/000113429.doc


  •      Housing Development Division, Housing Bureau

  •      Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

  •           Phone : (+81-3)5253-8506          Fax : (+81-3)5253-1628

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