The short version
- UR Rental Housing (UR賃貸住宅) is run by the Urban Renaissance Agency, a semi-public corporation — not a private landlord or agency. It advertises "four nos": no key money, no agency fee, no renewal fee, and no guarantor of any kind.
- What replaces the guarantor is a screening test: your monthly income needs to be roughly four times the rent, or you need savings of roughly 100 times the monthly rent, or you can prepay a full year of rent up front instead.
- Foreign applicants need a residence card with a remaining period of at least one year; a tourist or short-stay visa doesn't qualify. Permanent residents and holders of most mid- to long-term statuses are generally eligible.
- You apply directly to UR — there's no real estate agent standing between you and the corporation, which is also why there's no agency fee.
- The up-front cost isn't zero: a security deposit of two months' rent, plus prorated rent and management fee, still applies. It's the guarantor fee, key money, and agency commission that disappear, not the deposit.
A guarantor company turns you down, or you don't want to hand a stranger's company your income slip and your emergency contact's number just to rent a room. Our guide to rental guarantors in Japan covers why that screening trips up foreign applicants so often, and one of the options it points toward is UR Rental Housing — apartments managed directly by a government-linked housing corporation instead of a private landlord and agent chain. The pitch is real, but it swaps one set of hurdles for another, and this guide walks through what actually replaces the guarantor.
What UR Rental Housing actually is
UR stands for the Urban Renaissance Agency (都市再生機構), an independent administrative agency that manages a large stock of rental apartment buildings across Japan, mostly in and around major cities. UR is the landlord itself rather than a broker connecting you to one, so there's no commission-earning middleman in the transaction. That's the structural reason the standard "four nasty fees" of Japanese renting don't apply here: reikin (key money, a non-refundable gift to the landlord), chūkai tesūryō (agency commission), kōshinryō (a renewal fee due every one or two years), and a hoshōnin or hoshō gaisha (guarantor or guarantor company).
None of that makes UR housing free to move into. A security deposit (shikikin) equal to roughly two months' rent is still standard, along with prorated rent and management fee for your move-in month. Add those up and the realistic first-payment total lands around three months' rent — noticeably less than a private lease once you count what a guarantor company and agent would have charged on top, but still a real sum to have ready.
| Cost item | Typical private apartment | UR Rental Housing |
|---|---|---|
| Key money (reikin) | Often 1 month's rent, non-refundable | None |
| Agency fee (chūkai tesūryō) | Commonly around 1 month's rent + tax | None — you deal directly with UR |
| Guarantor / guarantor company fee | Roughly 0.5–1 month's rent, often yearly after that | None required |
| Renewal fee (kōshinryō) | Common every 1–2 years, often ~1 month's rent | None |
| Security deposit (shikikin) | Commonly 1–2 months' rent | Roughly 2 months' rent |
Treat the private-apartment figures as rough, commonly cited ranges rather than a fixed national price list — individual landlords and agencies set their own terms, and our comparison of ways to rent in Japan covers how much those figures can move between a regular lease, a share house, and other formats.
What replaces the guarantor: the income, savings, or prepayment test
Instead of a guarantor vouching for you, UR screens your ability to pay directly. The commonly cited rule of thumb is that your monthly income needs to run roughly four times the unit's monthly rent — one frequently referenced example bracket puts a rent of around ¥62,500 or more at requiring annual income of about ¥3,000,000 for a single applicant, or about ¥4,000,000 for a household. Brackets like this vary by rent level and appear to be adjusted by UR from time to time, so treat any specific number as an example rather than a guaranteed cutoff, and confirm the current figure for your target unit with UR directly.
If your income doesn't clear that bar, two alternatives are commonly described:
A few sources also describe narrower exceptions — combining income with a co-resident family member, or relaxed standards for elderly, disabled, or single-parent households and students backed by a parent's income — but the detail varies by source and looks like the kind of case-by-case handling UR's sales center would confirm rather than a fixed public table. If your situation is unusual, that's a question for UR directly, not something this article can resolve in general terms.
Who's eligible as a foreign resident
Sources describing UR's foreign-applicant rules converge on a residence card with at least one year of remaining status as the baseline — a tourist or short-stay visa doesn't qualify. Permanent residents, special permanent residents, and holders of most mid- to long-term statuses of residence are described as generally eligible, subject to the same income/savings/prepayment screening as anyone else. Whether a specific visa category or a specific branch's local stock counts you as eligible is a determination UR itself makes at application, not something this article can promise in advance — the honest version of this section is "bring your residence card and ask," not a guaranteed yes.
How to apply
From browsing listings to signing
- 1 Search listings on UR's own site UR publishes its own available-unit listings by region. There's no separate real estate portal or agent to go through first.
- 2 Check the rent against the income/savings bar Before you get attached to a unit, sanity-check whether your income, savings, or willingness to prepay a year clears that unit's requirement — the bar rises with the rent.
- 3 View the room and file a temporary application Applications go directly to UR — at a sales center, or in some cases online — rather than through a real estate agent's office.
- 4 Submit income/savings documentation Bring your residence card plus proof of income (payslips, a certificate of income, or an employer's income certificate if you've been employed under a year) or a bank balance certificate if you're going the savings or prepayment route. Bring originals; UR generally photocopies what it needs on the spot.
- 5 Screening, then the lease contract Once UR confirms income/visa eligibility, you sign the lease directly with UR and pay the deposit and prorated charges (or the year's prepayment, if that's your route).
Where this guide stops
This page explains UR's published rental structure in general terms. It isn't a promise that a specific application will be approved, isn't real estate brokerage or legal advice, and doesn't cover your individual residence-status eligibility — that's a question for the Immigration Services Agency, not a rental guide. Exact income brackets, deposit amounts, and available units vary by property, region, and time, and this article's figures should be treated as commonly cited examples to confirm with UR before you commit, not a fixed price list.
Related guides
UR is one specific answer to the guarantor problem; our guide to rental guarantors in Japan covers why the standard guarantor-company screening trips up so many foreign applicants in the first place, and where UR fits among the workarounds. A public-housing application isn't right for everyone — the local stock might be thin, or you might just want to move in faster with less paperwork. For those cases, our comparison of share house, apartment, monthly mansion, and guest house lays out the other formats side by side, and our comparison of share house operators covers the furnished, no-guarantor route that trades privacy for speed. And once a specific UR listing is in front of you, our guide to reading floor plan notation covers what the 1K/1DK/1LDK labels and tatami-mat sizes on the listing actually mean.
Sources
Confirmed via search engine results on 2026-09-13. This working environment's direct fetch of UR's official domain (ur-net.go.jp) and the other sources below was blocked by the network's egress policy while writing this article, so the figures above are cross-checked across multiple independent sources rather than a single direct read of UR's own pages. Several sources describe the income brackets and special-case exceptions slightly differently from one another, which is why this article treats them as commonly cited examples rather than a single authoritative table.
- Yasukusumu — "UR賃貸メリット・デメリット【2026年】民間との比較と申込み完全ガイド": yasukusumu.jp
- SUMUIE — "UR賃貸住宅の入居資格・家賃・申込み完全ガイド": sumuie.jp
- apartment-labo.com — "UR賃貸住宅とは?礼金・仲介手数料・更新料・保証人「4つのナシ」と入居条件をやさしく解説": apartment-labo.com
- Migaku — "UR Housing in Japan: How to Apply Without a Guarantor": migaku.com
- wagaya Japan — "Information about Foreigner-Friendly UR Rental Housing": wagaya-japan.com
- Japan Living Life — "UR Housing in Japan: Complete Guide for Foreigners": japanlivinglife.com
- local55.jp — "UR賃貸で収入が足りないときの対処法" / "ＵＲ賃貸の一時払い制度の割引率や支払い方法について": local55.jp