2026-06 · Covering 2025-05 – 2026-05, with year-over-year comparison
Executive Summary
This issue extends our monthly series backward by eight months, adding 2025-05 through 2025-12 to the 2026-01 – 2026-05 window covered in our previous report. The combined run of 13 consecutive months — 671 contracted luxury rental transactions (¥500,000/month and above) across Tokyo's 23 wards — is the first point at which we can speak to year-over-year change rather than month-over-month noise, and it changes the read on this market in one important way: the apparent softness in early 2026 was seasonal, not structural.
Minato-ku remains the center of gravity for the segment, accounting for 211 of 409 newly-added contracts (52%) across 2025-05 – 2025-12, at a median monthly rent of ¥800,000 — identical to its 2026-01 – 2026-05 median. Shibuya-ku is a distant second at 75 contracts (18%) and ¥720,000. The concentration is, if anything, tightening: Minato's volume share rose from 43% in the Jan–May 2026 window to 52% across the prior eight months, driven disproportionately by absorption at Mita Garden Hills, whose four sub-buildings combined for 39 contracts in this period alone — more than any single ward outside Minato and Shibuya.
Year-over-year, the only true apples-to-apples comparison available in this dataset — May 2025 vs. May 2026 — shows median contracted rent up 4.5% (¥670,000 → ¥700,000) on contract volume up 10.8% (37 → 41). Notably, this happened while median unit size fell (92.8㎡ → 87㎡) and average ¥/㎡ fell alongside it (¥11,340 → ¥8,765) — meaning the rent increase was not simply "more space at a higher rate," but a market clearing at a higher absolute price point on a smaller, more efficient footprint. That combination — rising headline rent with falling space and falling rate-per-㎡ — is consistent with intensifying competition for smaller, well-located units rather than a broad-based repricing of the stock.
Market Data
All figures represent contracted (成約) rents of ¥500,000/month or above, cleaned of properties without floor area data and entries inconsistent with a monthly rental figure. The dashed gold line marks the calendar-year boundary.
| Month | Contracts | Median Rent | Max Rent | Avg ¥/㎡ | Median Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2025 | 37 | ¥670,000 | ¥3,000,000 | ¥11,340 | 92.8㎡ |
| Jun 2025 | 50 | ¥687,500 | ¥2,500,000 | ¥9,795 | 85.4㎡ |
| Jul 2025 | 61 | ¥750,000 | ¥2,700,000 | ¥7,948 | 103.4㎡ |
| Aug 2025 | 45 | ¥680,000 | ¥2,250,000 | ¥8,411 | 92.7㎡ |
| Sep 2025 | 61 | ¥695,000 | ¥3,000,000 | ¥8,154 | 93.6㎡ |
| Oct 2025 | 46 | ¥750,000 | ¥2,350,000 | ¥9,537 | 87.4㎡ |
| Nov 2025 | 51 | ¥770,000 | ¥2,500,000 | ¥8,564 | 100.7㎡ |
| Dec 2025 | 58 | ¥680,000 | ¥3,000,000 | ¥8,903 | 86.8㎡ |
| Jan 2026 | 39 | ¥628,000 | ¥1,500,000 | ¥9,389 | 85㎡ |
| Feb 2026 | 63 | ¥675,000 | ¥2,400,000 | ¥9,142 | 92㎡ |
| Mar 2026 | 66 | ¥740,000 | ¥2,400,000 | ¥9,984 | 94㎡ |
| Apr 2026 | 53 | ¥673,500 | ¥4,000,000 | ¥9,039 | 89㎡ |
| May 2026 | 41 | ¥700,000 | ¥1,620,000 | ¥8,765 | 87㎡ |
Two patterns stand out across the full 13-month run. First, volume is markedly seasonal: contract counts trough in January (39, the lowest reading in the series) and again in May–June of the prior year, then build through Q3 toward a November peak (51) before a year-end pickup in December (58) — a pattern consistent with corporate relocation cycles bracketing Japan's April fiscal-year start and year-end transfers. Second, price shows no equivalent seasonality: November 2025's ¥770,000 median is the series high, not a Q1 figure, suggesting the luxury segment's pricing power is driven more by available inventory at the top of the stock (large units in towers like Azabu Daiichi Mansions and the Mita Garden Hills complex) than by the calendar.
Market Data
Volume and pricing by ward for the eight months newly added in this issue, ranked by number of contracts. Wards with fewer than 5 contracts are excluded for statistical reliability. For comparison, the 2026-01 – 2026-05 period (covered in our prior issue) showed an almost identical ward ranking, led by Minato-ku at a median of ¥800,000 on 112 contracts and Shibuya-ku at ¥740,000 on 55 — evidence that the ward hierarchy in this segment is structural, not a function of any single reporting window.
| Ward | Contracts | Median Rent | Max Rent | Avg ¥/㎡ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minato-ku | 211 | ¥800,000 | ¥3,000,000 | ¥9,092 |
| Shibuya-ku | 75 | ¥720,000 | ¥3,000,000 | ¥8,210 |
| Shinjuku-ku | 28 | ¥600,000 | ¥1,550,000 | ¥8,313 |
| Chiyoda-ku | 20 | ¥640,000 | ¥1,200,000 | ¥7,279 |
| Shinagawa-ku | 18 | ¥600,000 | ¥1,200,000 | ¥5,858 |
| Chuo-ku | 16 | ¥605,000 | ¥1,700,000 | ¥7,376 |
| Meguro-ku | 10 | ¥550,000 | ¥1,150,000 | ¥15,607 |
| Setagaya-ku | 9 | ¥650,000 | ¥1,250,000 | ¥7,830 |
| Ota-ku | 6 | ¥588,000 | ¥732,000 | ¥5,376 |
| Suginami-ku | 5 | ¥500,000 | ¥1,145,000 | ¥11,163 |
Note on Meguro-ku and Suginami-ku: both wards' average ¥/㎡ figures are elevated by one or two very small, very high-rate units inside an otherwise thin sample (n=10 and n=5, respectively), and should be read as indicative rather than representative.
Market Data
Buildings appearing most frequently in the dataset, indicating high turnover or large unit counts. The Mita Garden Hills complex — split across four registered sub-buildings — collectively logged 39 contracts in this period, which would rank it ahead of every entry below if counted as a single address.
| Building | Ward | Contracts |
|---|---|---|
| World Tower Residence | Minato-ku | 18 |
| Azabu Daiichi Mansions | Minato-ku | 16 |
| Mita Garden Hills North Hill | Minato-ku | 12 |
| Mita Garden Hills East Hill | Minato-ku | 11 |
| Mita Garden Hills South Hill | Minato-ku | 8 |
| Mita Garden Hills Park Mansion | Minato-ku | 8 |
| Park Tower Nishi-Shinjuku | Shinjuku-ku | 8 |
| Akasaka Tower Residence Top of the Hill | Minato-ku | 7 |
Methodology
Source: A designated real estate transaction database operated under Japan's Building Lots and Buildings Transaction Business Act, accessed via TokyoExpat's industry membership.
Scope: All contracted (成約) rental transactions of ¥500,000/month or above, Tokyo Metropolis, 2025-05 – 2026-05. No ward restriction applied. The 2025-05 – 2025-12 portion is new to this issue; 2026-01 – 2026-05 figures are carried forward from our prior report.
Cleaning: Records missing floor-area data, and records whose implied ¥/㎡ rate exceeded ¥150,000 (a threshold well above any plausible rent and indicative of sale-price figures misfiled in the source export), were excluded from all statistics above.
Limitations: This is a transaction-count sample, not a comprehensive census. Wards with fewer than 5 contracts in a given period carry low statistical reliability. Year-over-year comparison is currently possible only for the single calendar month (May) appearing in both the 2025 and 2026 portions of this dataset; as additional months roll forward, this report will be able to extend YoY comparison across the full calendar.
The Analyst's Take
Reading through the seasonality: a structurally tight, supply-concentrated market
Strip out the calendar effect and this dataset tells a fairly simple story. Demand for ¥500K+ rentals in Tokyo is not broadening across the map — it is consolidating into a shrinking set of addresses. Minato-ku's share of total volume rose from 43% in the five months we reported in our last issue to 52% in the eight months we're adding today, and within Minato, a single development pipeline — Mita Garden Hills, completed in waves through late 2024 and into 2025 — now accounts for roughly one in five Minato contracts on its own. That is a concentration risk for tenants (negotiating leverage sits with whoever controls the next tranche of new-build supply in that corridor) and a signal for landlords elsewhere: comparable rent growth outside the Minato/Shibuya/Mita-Hills axis has been far more muted, with Shinjuku-ku and Shinagawa-ku both clearing at medians roughly 25% below the city's prime tier despite broadly comparable ¥/㎡ rates.
The year-over-year print is the more interesting data point for anyone trying to time a lease decision. A 4.5% rise in median contracted rent against a 10.8% rise in volume is not the profile of a market running out of room — it's a market absorbing more transactions at a slightly higher clearing price, on slightly smaller units. We read that as continued tightness rather than overheating: there is no sign in twelve months of data of the kind of acceleration (20%+ YoY, in line with what Tokyo's broader new-build sales market has shown) that would suggest a bubble dynamic in the rental segment specifically. For relocating executives, the practical takeaway is that timing within the year matters more than timing across years — January remains the softest month on record for both volume and headline price, while Q4 (particularly November) is the most competitive.