Shinjuku Tightens Rules on Airbnb-Style Rentals

Shinjuku is moving to restrict short-term rentals after complaints about tourist noise, suitcases blocking apartment corridors and garbage left improperly discarded. The changes would affect about 2,000 existing properties in a district with more minpaku rentals than any other municipality in Japan. Residents live with the nuisance; owners and platforms collect the returns.

Residents Pay for the Rental Boom

The number of minpaku properties in Shinjuku has more than doubled, while data cited in a Bloomberg Opinion commentary indicate that most are investment properties. The piece says non-resident owners and tourists benefit as residents face nuisance, uncollected garbage and pressure that can push rents higher. In other words, the costs don’t stop at a booking checkout screen.

Japan already caps short-term rental stays at 180 nights a year. Changes this year allow municipalities to impose further restrictions, giving Shinjuku more room to respond to complaints in its apartment buildings. The district’s move puts local residents’ complaints against a business model that turns homes into income-producing property, often for owners who don’t live there.

The mayor, a longtime opponent of short-term rentals, said the platforms’ “lofty ideals” — letting hosts earn side income from unused rooms and perhaps introducing guests to neighborhoods — had not materialized. The commentary’s account of Shinjuku data points instead to investment properties and the costs residents face. The lofty language meets the corridor full of suitcases.

Rules for Apps, Too

The Bloomberg Opinion commentary argues that Japan regulates a service like a taxi or hotel if it looks and operates like one, even when an app connects customers and providers. It says the argument that Japan is closing ranks against foreign firms to protect established interests, such as the taxi lobby, doesn’t explain the whole approach. The principle described is less “let the app decide” than “the service still answers to rules.”

Ridesharing deregulation, introduced in limited form in 2024, has stalled. Uber Technologies Inc chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi told The New York Times, “Japan is forcing me to be patient.” Uber works with existing taxi firms using its technology, but private rides in the style of UberX have made little headway.

Japan’s existing system for individual drivers, kojin taxi, is tightly regulated; a license requires years of accident-free professional driving experience. The commentary says there’s an argument for loosening the rules, but not simply to benefit Silicon Valley disruptors. No election or legislative campaign appears in the account as a way around that structure.

One App Won’t Fit Every Place

Other cities have tightened rules too, the commentary says: New York has regulated Uber more like taxis and enacted an Airbnb law requiring hosts to live at the property; Paris has tightened short-term-stay rules; and Barcelona is about to shut them down entirely. Japan, it argues, is a difficult market for disruptors whose advantage comes from legal loopholes, while most people expect regulators to regulate and government to supervise private business.

The column also describes technology being folded into existing systems. Go Inc, which operates the largest taxi-hailing app and listed earlier this year, has a platform that reduces payment friction. A forthcoming partnership with Alphabet Inc's Waymo plans to bring robotaxis to Japan. The commentary says more rides are needed, especially in rural areas.

Shinjuku condominiums may be a poor fit for Airbnb, the piece argues, while mountain holiday homes are different. In Nishinari, one of Osaka's poorest districts, former flophouses used by day laborers are being converted into Airbnbs; less densely populated parts of Tokyo are planning to loosen restrictions. Japan has millions of empty homes, cramped apartments, rural areas without taxis and urban centers with crowded public transport, the commentary says. The case laid out isn’t that every place needs the same app or rule. It’s that residents shouldn’t have to absorb the costs when property and platforms reshape where they live.