Corporate Housing Solutions In Japan With FREA!

This Fall, FREA has formally launched our Corporate Housing Solutions division, which is geared towards providing comprehensive relocation support for corporate employees.

Initially, FREA was founded as a foreigner-specialized real estate company with only in personal lease contracts in mind, but we began receiving inquiries from foreigners seeking to select their own housing for a corporate contract and began to handle those as well.  Through our ongoing correspondence with HR staff from multiple companies during the process of coordinating various leases, we came to realize that many things are still lacking in the traditional scope of realtor services for this area.

 

1. Unfamiliarity Of Japanese Companies With Handling Incoming Foreigners
2. A Lack Of Comprehensive Housing Services For Relocation
3. FREA’s Flexible Approach To Housing Services

 

1. Unfamiliarity Of Japanese Companies With Handling Incoming Foreigners

As a whole, most companies in Japan are generally not well-equipped to handle incoming foreigners—designated relocation departments are rare and standard HR staff are not usually familiar with the housing process as it applies to foreigners.  While a select few relocation companies do exist in Japan, these come at premium prices intended for executive tier individuals, placing them well out of budget for more standard employees and leading to a very time-consuming process for HR.

 

2. A Lack Of Comprehensive Housing Services For Relocation

In cases where the employee does not speak any Japanese (which in fact makes up a significant portion of incoming foreigners), there is an increased demand on HR to provide interpretation support—but even in the case of foreigner-friendly agencies with English language ability, most provide very few additional services beyond basic property searching and contract signing.  Setting up utilities, installing Internet, and other basic essentials to relocation such as ward office registration and bank account opening in Japan are neither included nor available, and the burden for all of these is passed on to the HR staff as a result.

 

3. FREA’s Flexible Approach To Housing Services

FREA was originally established with the aim of resolving foreigner barriers to rental housing in Japan.  With this same approach in mind, we have continued to actively and flexibly shape our service offerings in accordance with the needs we see appearing most acutely among our client base.  We are very excited to further expand our support services to encompass even more of the existing relocation tasks currently burdening HR departments!

 

For additional details please visit our Corporate Housing Solutions page!