LIFULL HOME'S Scraper — Japan Rents, Property Prices & Agencies

Japanese property, one row per flat rather than one per building: rent or sale price in yen, management fee, deposit and key money, layout, floor area, nearest station with walking minutes — and the letting agency.

What does the LIFULL HOME'S Scraper do?

This Actor collects live listings from LIFULL HOME'S (homes.co.jp), one of Japan's largest property portals, with more than 230,000 rental listings in Tokyo alone. Japanese portals list buildings, not flats: one card carries the address, the nearest station and the build year, and inside it sits a table of the individual units currently available, each with its own rent, layout and floor. Collecting the card alone would report thirty rows where the market has a hundred, so this Actor expands every card into one row per unit and copies the building's fields onto each of them.

Pick a section — rentals, resale or new-build condos, resale or new-build houses, or land — and one or more prefectures in romaji, and the Actor pages through them. Prices are quoted in man-yen (万円 = 10,000 JPY), so 5,990万円 is converted to 59,900,000 and 8.7万円 of rent to 87,000 a month. Rental rows additionally carry the management fee, deposit (敷金) and key money (礼金) — the up-front costs that decide what renting in Japan really costs — and the letting agency's name.

Who is it for?

• Relocation and expat services who need real rents, not the ranges guidebooks quote.
• Property investors comparing yields between Tokyo, Osaka and regional prefectures.
• Proptech teams building or benchmarking a Japanese inventory.
• Analysts and researchers studying Japan's rental market, vacancy and the akiya question.
• Corporate mobility teams budgeting housing allowances by ward and station line.

Use cases

• Build a rent-per-square-metre map by station and walking distance across Tokyo.
• Compare deposit and key money practices between prefectures — they differ sharply and change the true move-in cost.
• Track resale condo asking prices by build year to model depreciation in the Japanese market.
• Estimate gross yield by running rentals and resale over the same wards and joining on address.
• Collect letting agency names by area to find who controls supply in a district.
• Feed an AI agent live Japanese listings so it can answer "what does a 1LDK near Shibuya cost?".

Why use this LIFULL HOME'S Scraper?

• One row per unit, not per building — the difference between 30 rows and 110 on the same page.
• Japan's real up-front costs: management fee, deposit and key money, not just the headline rent.
• Prices converted from man-yen, so no row reads as a flat costing 87 yen.
• Station and walking minutes parsed — in Japan that pair sets the price more than the address does.
• The letting agency's name on rental rows, and the vendor on sale rows.
• Six sections across every prefecture: rentals, resale and new-build condos and houses, and land.

What data can you extract?

One row per unit. Anything the source left blank comes back as null.

Field	Type	Description
listingId	string	HOME'S listing identifier
url	string	Direct link to the unit or building page
dealType	string	Rent or Sale
buildingName	string	Building name in Japanese
propertyType	string	Property type as HOME'S labels it, e.g. 賃貸マンション (rental apartment building)
priceYen	number	Monthly rent or asking price, converted to plain yen
priceText	string	Price as published, in man-yen
managementFeeYen	number	Monthly management fee (管理費), rentals only
depositText	string	Deposit (敷金) as published, rentals only
keyMoneyText	string	Key money (礼金) as published, rentals only
layout	string	Japanese layout code, e.g. 1LDK, 2SLDK or ワンルーム (studio)
areaSqm	number	Floor area in square metres
floor	string	Floor the unit is on
roomNumber	string	Room number where the listing shows one
direction	string	Main aspect, e.g. 南 (south), sale listings
address	string	Full address
prefecture	string	Prefecture requested
station	string	Nearest station with line and walking time
walkMinutes	number	Walking minutes to the station
buildingAgeText	string	Building age as published
builtYear	number	Year built, derived from a relative age where no calendar year is printed
floorsInBuilding	number	Number of floors in the building
totalUnits	number	Total units in the building, sale listings
features	string	Amenity list, e.g. auto-lock, lift, balcony
agency	string	Letting agency or vendor
imageUrl	string	Floor plan or photo
scrapedAt	string	When this row was collected

Sample output

{
  "listingId": "587276d55afb63e90334bcc6f46c2e821b3d191f",
  "url": "https://www.homes.co.jp/chintai/room/587276d55afb63e90334bcc6f46c2e821b3d191f/",
  "dealType": "Rent",
  "buildingName": "フィオーネ亀有",
  "propertyType": "賃貸マンション",
  "priceYen": 87000,
  "priceText": "8.7万円",
  "managementFeeYen": 3000,
  "depositText": "無",
  "keyMoneyText": "-",
  "layout": "ワンルーム",
  "areaSqm": 16.02,
  "floor": "4階",
  "roomNumber": null,
  "direction": null,
  "address": "東京都足立区中川1丁目",
  "prefecture": "tokyo",
  "station": "JR常磐線 亀有駅 徒歩10分",
  "walkMinutes": 10,
  "buildingAgeText": "新築 / 4階建",
  "builtYear": 2026,
  "floorsInBuilding": 4,
  "totalUnits": null,
  "features": "フローリング浴室乾燥機角部屋オートロック洗面所独立",
  "agency": "株式会社タウンハウジング東京 浅草店",
  "imageUrl": "https://image1.homes.jp/smallimg/image.php?file=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.homes.jp%2F142594%2Frent%2F165641%2F1%2F1%...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-15T08:12:39.159Z"
}

How to use the LIFULL HOME'S Scraper

Option A — rentals in a prefecture

Keep the default rental section, enter tokyo and set a result limit. Tokyo alone lists over 230,000 rental units, and each page expands to roughly 110 rows.

Option B — resale condos for investment analysis

Switch the section to resale condos and list several prefectures — tokyo,osaka,kanagawa. Sale rows carry the aspect, the total units in the building and the build year, which is what resale pricing turns on.

Option C — rent and sale over the same area

Run the Actor twice over the same prefecture, once for rentals and once for resale condos, then join on address or station to estimate gross yield.

Input parameters

Input	Type	Description
propertyType	string	Which HOME'S section to collect. Rentals are by far the largest — Tokyo alone lists over 200,000. Default: "chintai".
prefectures	string	Prefecture slugs in romaji, as they appear in a HOME'S URL: tokyo, osaka, kanagawa, aichi, saitama, chiba, hyogo, fukuoka, hokkaido, kyoto. Each is crawled as its own search, so several can be listed, separated by commas. Default: "tokyo".
maxResults	integer	Stop after this many units. Each page holds 30 buildings, which expand to roughly 40-110 individual units. Default: 500.
proxyConfiguration	object	HOME'S serves Japanese exits. Residential proxy pinned to Japan is used automatically.

Tips for best results

• Prefecture slugs are romaji as they appear in the URL: tokyo, osaka, kanagawa, aichi, fukuoka, hokkaido.
• Rentals are by far the deepest section. Sale sections are smaller but carry the aspect and building-size fields rentals do not.
• Deposit and key money are published as written — 無 means none, - means not stated. They are kept as text because that distinction matters when budgeting a move.
• builtYear is a real year on sale listings and derived from the relative age on rentals, where HOME'S prints "新築" (new build) or "1年" instead of a date.
• Walking minutes matter more than distance in Japanese pricing — a 5-minute and a 15-minute walk from the same station are different markets.

Integrations

Connect this Actor to Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack, Google Sheets, GitHub, Airtable or any HTTP endpoint through Apify integrations. Every finished run can push its dataset straight into your warehouse, or fire a webhook so a downstream job starts the moment the data lands.

API usage

Run the Actor from your own code with the Apify API. Datasets can be exported as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS or HTML, and every run is available through the Apify API reference.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~lifull-homes-japan-property-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"input": {"propertyType": "chintai", "prefectures": "tokyo", "maxResults": 1000, "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"], "apifyProxyCountry": "JP"}}}'

Python, JavaScript, PHP and CLI clients are documented under Apify API clients.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is callable from any MCP-compatible client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code or your own agent — through the Apify MCP server. An agent can call it to answer live questions about Japanese rents, move-in costs, station distances and property prices instead of guessing from stale training data.

FAQ

Do I need a HOME'S account or API key?

No. The Actor reads public listing pages with no login and no key.

Why one row per unit instead of per building?

Because that is where the data is. A single building card can hold six available flats at different rents, layouts and floors. Reporting the building alone would throw away most of the market.

What are 敷金 and 礼金?

Deposit and key money — the up-front payments Japanese tenancies require on top of rent. Key money is not refundable, which is why it is reported separately rather than folded into a single figure.

What does 1LDK mean?

One room plus a combined living, dining and kitchen area. 2SLDK adds a second room and a service room. ワンルーム is a studio.

How many listings can one run return?

Tokyo rentals alone exceed 230,000. Each page expands to roughly 40 to 110 units, so the practical limit is the result cap you set.

Which sections are supported?

Six: rental homes, resale condos, new-build condos, resale houses, new-build houses and land.

Why are deposit and management fee empty on sale runs?

They only exist for rentals. Likewise the aspect and total-units columns are sale-side fields. The dataset keeps both sets so one Actor covers both markets honestly.

Is the data in Japanese?

Yes. Building names, addresses, station names and amenities are published in Japanese and collected as written. Numeric fields are converted to plain numbers.

Can I export to CSV or Excel?

Yes. Every run's dataset exports as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS or HTML from the Storage tab, the API, or automatically through an integration.

How fresh is the data?

Every run reads the site live at that moment, so the data is as fresh as the site itself. Schedule the Actor hourly, daily or weekly to build a time series.

How often is the Actor updated?

It is monitored and fixed when the site changes its markup or its endpoints. Report anything that looks wrong through the Issues tab and it gets picked up.

Is it legal to scrape LIFULL HOME'S?

This Actor collects only publicly available information — the same pages any visitor can open without logging in. It does not bypass a login, and it does not touch private or personal accounts. Public data collection is legal in most jurisdictions, but how you use the data is your responsibility: if any record contains personal data, GDPR and comparable laws still apply, and you need a lawful basis for processing it. When in doubt, take legal advice. See Apify's ethical web scraping guide.

Related scrapers

• Mercari Japan Scraper — Japanese marketplace listings.
• Niconico Scraper — Japanese video platform data.
• Zameen Scraper — Pakistani property with agent phones.
• MagicBricks Scraper — Indian property and agents.
• Boligsiden Scraper — Danish property with agent contacts.