The Metropolitan Area Real Estate Fair Trade Council announced the ninth "Simultaneous Survey Report on Internet Rental Advertising" on September 29th according to a press release (linked below).

Between May and June, 2021, the Council surveyed sampled rental listings across the following four nationwide, Japanese language property portals who make up the Council’s “Portal Site Advertising Optimization Subcommittee”;

AtHome Co. Ltd.

Chintai Co., Ltd. 

LIFULL Co., Ltd. (owners of Homes.co.jp)

Recruit Co., Ltd. (owners of Suumo)

Based on “certain logic” as written in the press release, the Council extracted 342 properties deemed “highly likely” to be decoy adverts, left online after the property was likely to be contracted in the effort of the advertising real estate firm to elicit renter inquiries.

The real estate agent who left the listing on the property portal would then inform the renter that this particular property has “just” gone to contract and proceed to introduce other, similar properties.

Of the 342 properties extracted, 25 listings (or 7.2%) were deemed as decoy adverts.  From the 27 real estate companies whose 342 listings were sampled, 11 companies (or 40.7%) were found to be deploying decoy rental adverts.

According to the Council, the 11 companies that deployed decoy rental adverts will be subject to “certain measures” according to the press release.  

The Council also said the monitoring of the issue would be ongoing.

REthink Commentary on Findings

For a country with a high tech image like Japan, the real estate industry is archaic.  

This is especially true when marketing property for both sales and leasing.  Much higher transaction volume in leasing means that decoy listings are more pronounced; what was available today might very well not be available tomorrow. 

Decoy listings are not the result of any malicious intent to dupe a renter, but more a symptom of outdated technology stacks powering existing marketing practices.

At present, all data is managed manually across multiple systems and when agents get busy, the first thing they ignore is their online listing curation.  

What the industry needs is one central place to manage listings that syndicate in real time across platforms.  While steps are moving towards that direction, the solution is still a ways off.

Is any of this the consumer’s fault?  Absolutely not, however if you need to rent an apartment, you are going to have to work with the system as it is and not get caught up in how things should be. 

So what to do?  As the surveyed data illustrates, recognizing there is a good chance the property you found online is no longer available is the first step. 

Rather than search for a specific property, what renters should do is use the portals to find an agency that is working in their targeted area, advertising property that is similar to what you wish to live in. 

Once you have identified that agency on the portals, then look at the agency’s own web site, usually linked to on the portal, to confirm your initial impression.  

If the agency shows one image of itself on the property portal but another when you visit their site, that is a danger sign and you should avoid that agency and move onto the next.

If the firm’s image matches on both the portal and their own site, meaning they seem to have continuity in what they are promoting in the area you wish to live in, then contact the agency.  

Committing to one or two right agencies instead of inquiring on tens of listings advertised by tens of companies is more productive to get what you are after.

Further Reading

Real Estate Fair Trade Council Press Release (Japanese only; September, 2021)

Born of Necessity: Social Media Lead Generation for Tokyo Property (REthink Tokyo; August, 2021)