How To Check If A Japanese Real Estate Agent Is Licensed (宅建業免許)

Who needs a licence, and who issues it

Under Article 3, paragraph 1 of the Act, anyone intending to carry on real estate brokerage business must be licensed, subject to the narrow exceptions described below, and which authority licenses them depends on nothing more than geography:

• Offices in two or more prefectures: a licence from the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (国土交通大臣免許).
• Offices in one prefecture only: a licence from the governor of that prefecture (都道府県知事免許).

Neither is superior. A Minister's licence means the firm has offices in more than one prefecture, not that it was held to a higher standard, and a small Kyoto agency with a single office will correctly hold a Kyoto governor's licence. Article 3, paragraph 2 sets the licence term at five years, and paragraph 3 requires a renewal to continue trading. A firm that has applied for renewal but not yet received a decision keeps trading on the old licence until the decision comes, under paragraph 4.

A handful of counterparties are lawfully in this business without an Article 3 licence, so an absent licence number is not automatically a red flag. Each of these sits outside Articles 3 to 7 and Article 12:

• A trust company licensed under the Trust Business Act, under Article 77, paragraphs 1 to 3: it notifies the Minister instead and is then deemed a Minister-licensed 宅建業者 for the rest of the Act. A bank that also conducts trust business reaches the same position by Article 77, paragraph 4 through Article 9 of the Enforcement Order, with its permitted activity confined to what falls inside its trust business. These are the 届出業者 (notification-registered traders) that Tokyo's search lists as a third category. The office sign differs between the two routes: Article 31-2 of the Enforcement Regulation substitutes 様式第二十七号 and its siblings only where Article 9, paragraph 2 of the Order applies Article 50, paragraph 1 to a financial institution also conducting trust business, and that form carries a 届出番号 and notification date in place of a licence number, plus a statement that the business is carried on within the scope of its trust business under the Act on Additional Operation of Trust Business by Financial Institutions. A Trust Business Act trust company under Article 77 is simply deemed a Minister-licensed 宅建業者 with no such substitution, so do not expect that wording from one.
• A registered investment corporation (a J-REIT) whose assets are managed by an approved 宅建業者, under Article 77-2, and a 特例事業者 under the Real Estate Specified Joint Enterprise Act, under Article 77-3. Both are deemed Minister-licensed, but with a longer list of provisions switched off: Articles 31-3, 35, 35-2, 37 and 48 to 50 do not apply to them either, so neither the pre-contract explanation duty nor the office-sign duty sits on the entity itself.
• The national government and local governments, to which Article 78, paragraph 1 says the Act does not apply at all. A municipality selling surplus land is not an unlicensed trader. Several public corporations are brought inside that same provision by their own enabling orders, which apply Article 78, paragraph 1 to them as though they were the state or a local authority: the Urban Renaissance Agency (UR) under Article 34 of its Enforcement Order, and the local housing supply corporations under Article 2 of theirs.

That list is not exhaustive, and a public body with its own statute may well sit outside the licence requirement. But every ordinary agency and developer you are likely to deal with needs the licence, so treat a missing licence number as a question to resolve rather than as proof of either fraud or legitimacy.

Operating without a licence is otherwise flatly prohibited by Article 12, and so, separately, is advertising or holding yourself out as being in the business without one. An unlicensed "agent" is not a regulatory technicality: under Article 79, item 2, breaching that prohibition carries imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to ¥3,000,000, or both. The same article reaches obtaining a licence by wrongful means and trading in breach of a suspension order. None of the protections described below apply to a firm outside the system.

Reading a licence number

A licence number looks like 東京都知事(5)第012345号 or 国土交通大臣(3)第00XXXX号. The three parts each tell you something:

• The authority (東京都知事, 国土交通大臣) is the licensing body, which also tells you whether the firm has offices in one prefecture or several.
• The number in parentheses is the 回次, the licence count. Tokyo's licence information service states the rule plainly: the first licence is (1), and the figure goes up by one at each renewal. Read it as renewals under the current licensing authority, not as the firm's age. A firm that opens an office in a second prefecture, or closes down to one, has to change licensing authority, and that 免許換え is filed as a new licence rather than a renewal: MLIT's own guidance groups a governor-to-Minister conversion under 新規. The count therefore restarts at (1) while the same business carries on, so a (1) can belong to a long-established agency that has just expanded. Do not multiply the count into years, and do not compare two firms' counts as a measure of which has traded longer.
• The serial number identifies the firm within that authority.

A low count is not a sign of inexperience, for the reason just given, and a high count is not a guarantee of anything. What the number is genuinely good for is matching. The number on the business card, on the sign in the office, in the brochure and in the national register should all be the same number, naming the same authority and the same licensee. A mismatch is the single cheapest red flag to spot.

What the free national search covers

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism runs a public search over the licence registers, the 建設業者・宅建業者等企業情報検索システム, and it covers both Minister-licensed and governor-licensed firms in one place, which the system's own explanatory note confirms. You can search by company name in kanji or full-width katakana, or by licence number, and you can restrict it by location.

A result row gives you the licensing authority, the licence number, the trading name, the representative's name, the office name and the office address. Two things about that output are worth knowing before you use it:

• It returns one row per office, not per licensee. A firm with a head office and five branches comes back as six rows sharing one licence number. That is a feature: it lets you confirm that the specific branch you are dealing with is a registered office of that licensee. A "branch" that does not appear anywhere in the register deserves a direct question.
• It does not show disciplinary history, and it does not show the licence expiry date. Those come from the two sources below.

For a firm licensed by the Tokyo governor, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government additionally runs its own 宅地建物取引業者免許情報提供サービス, covering Tokyo governor licences, Minister licences and notification-registered traders, and it fills both of those gaps. Its details tab shows the licence validity period and the date the first licence was granted, which is a better answer than reasoning from the 回次, along with a 法人・個人の別 field stating whether the licensee is a corporation or an individual. It has a separate dispositions tab, and it prints the date its data was last refreshed. Tokyo notes that a validity period starting in the future means a renewal has been completed, and that records can still display shortly after expiry or while a renewal is in progress.

Checking for disciplinary action

A licence tells you a firm is permitted to trade. It does not tell you how it has behaved. Dispositions under the Act come in escalating order: a 指示 (instruction) under Article 65, paragraph 1; a 業務停止 (suspension of business) of up to one year under Article 65, paragraph 2; and revocation of the licence under Article 66, paragraph 1, which the authority must impose for the grounds listed there, including obtaining the licence by wrongful means and serious cases of the suspension grounds.

Two features of the statute matter to a buyer. First, Article 8, paragraph 2, item 4 puts any Article 65 disposition into the register itself, alongside the licence number. Second, under Article 65, paragraphs 3 and 4, a prefectural governor can sanction a firm licensed by the Minister or by a different governor for conduct within that prefecture, so a disposition does not necessarily come from the authority named in the licence number.

The public search is MLIT's ネガティブ情報等検索サイト, which has a dedicated page for 宅地建物取引業者. Its published scope, stated on the page itself, sets the limits you need to respect:

• It covers dispositions by the Minister, the regional development bureaus, the Hokkaido and Okinawa bureaus and prefectural governors, and it publishes 免許取消, 業務停止 and 指示.
• Records are kept for five years, and the data is refreshed roughly monthly. A clean result therefore means "no published disposition in the last five years", which is not the same as a clean history.
• MLIT states that some local authorities do not publish through the site, and separately lists 23 prefectures that publish this information on their own websites as well, among them Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Aichi, Kyoto and Hyōgo. Prefectural dispositions from several of those do appear in the national results, so the list is not a hole in the national search so much as a signal that the prefecture publishes its own, often more current, page. MLIT's own consumer-facing guidance makes the same point, advising that the database may be incomplete and that the licensing authority can be asked directly.

The practical reading: search the national site, then spend another two minutes on the own-site disposition page of each prefecture where the firm has an office or where your transaction is happening, before you rely on a clean result. Note that this does not turn on the licence type: because a governor can sanction a Minister-licensed firm for conduct in that prefecture, a Minister-licensed firm can carry a prefectural disposition too.

What the law entitles you to see, and when

Several checks cost nothing and are hard for a dishonest operator to fake, because the Act requires the material to be physically present.

At the office, on display. Article 50, paragraph 1 requires a prescribed sign at every office and at other places where the firm does business. The prescribed form (様式第九号 under Article 19 of the Enforcement Regulation) is a board of at least 35cm by 25cm carrying the licence number, the licence validity period, the trading name, the representative's name, this office's representative, this office's count of full-time 宅地建物取引士 against its total staff, and the head office address. That sign is the easiest way to see the expiry date anywhere in the country, since the national search does not carry it, though a Tokyo licensee's expiry is also available online from the Tokyo service above. Separately, Article 46, paragraph 4 requires the commission schedule to be displayed where the public can see it, which MLIT's interpretative guidance accepts may be a digital display if it is viewable whenever the public needs it.

The staffing line on that sign is checkable arithmetic. Article 31-3, paragraph 1 requires each office to have full-time 宅地建物取引士 in a number set by ordinance, and Article 15-5-3 of the Enforcement Regulation sets that number at at least one fifth of the people engaged in the business at that office.

On request. Article 48, paragraph 1 requires employees to carry an identification card, and paragraph 2 requires them to show it when a party to the transaction asks. Paragraph 3 requires an employee register at each office, and paragraph 4 requires the firm to let a party to the transaction inspect it on request. Both are rights you exercise by asking. Note the boundary: the transaction ledger (帳簿) kept under Article 49 is not open to you in the same way.

At the pre-contract explanation. Before the contract concludes, Article 35, paragraph 1 requires the firm to have a 宅地建物取引士 deliver and explain a written statement of the listed matters, and paragraph 4 requires that person to present their 宅建士証 while doing so, without being asked. Article 22-4 separately requires any 宅建士 to show the card whenever a party to the transaction requests it. If the explanation is given by someone who cannot produce the card, the firm is not complying with Article 35.

Article 35-2 also addresses the money-protection question, though in noticeably softer language than the duty above: the firm is to explain, before the contract is concluded (契約が成立するまでの間, that is, before it is formed, not merely before closing), either the deposit office holding its business deposit or, if it belongs to a designated guarantee association, that membership and the association's details.

What that deposit is actually for

Every licensee has to put money at risk, which is the mechanism behind a compensation claim if a transaction goes wrong. There are two routes.

Under Article 25 and Article 2-4 of the Enforcement Order, a firm outside the association system deposits a business deposit (営業保証金) of ¥10,000,000 for its head office plus ¥5,000,000 for each additional office, and Article 25, paragraph 5 bars it from starting business until the deposit is filed and notified.

Most firms instead join a designated guarantee association and pay a far smaller contribution: under Article 64-9 and Article 7 of the Enforcement Order, ¥600,000 for the head office plus ¥300,000 per additional office. The figure that matters to you is not that contribution. Article 64-8, paragraph 1 gives a person who transacted with a member firm, and who is not themselves a licensed trader, the right to be paid out of the association's compensation deposit up to the amount of business deposit that firm would have had to lodge if it were not a member, that is, the ¥10,000,000-plus-branches figure, not the ¥600,000 one. Paragraph 2 requires the association to certify the amount before the right is exercised.

Commission: what an agent may lawfully charge

Commission is capped by ministerial notice (昭和45年建設省告示第1552号, last amended by Notice No. 949 of 21 June 2024), and Article 46, paragraph 2 makes exceeding it a breach. For a sale brokerage the cap is tiered and stated inclusive of consumption tax: 5.5% of the portion up to ¥2,000,000, 4.4% of the portion from ¥2,000,000 to ¥4,000,000, and 3.3% of the portion above ¥4,000,000, calculated on the price excluding any consumption tax on the property itself. For anything above ¥4,000,000 that works out to the familiar 3.3% of the price plus ¥66,000, tax included (the same thing as 3% plus ¥60,000 before tax).

Those tiers apply to a taxable business: the second item of the notice is written to apply only to a 課税事業者. A small or sole-proprietor agency exempt from consumption tax under Article 9, paragraph 1 of the Consumption Tax Act is covered by the eleventh item instead, and its cap is lower: the amount calculated under items 2 to 10 multiplied by 100/110, plus the input consumption tax equivalent on that brokerage, plus any advertising charge permitted below. MLIT's guidance caps that input-tax component at 0.04 times the tax-exclusive figure. Every yen figure in this section is the taxable-business cap, so for an exempt agency the ceiling is the tax-exclusive equivalent plus at most 4 per cent, not the tax-inclusive one. Ask which applies before you agree a fee.

The eleventh item also limits extras. Beyond items 2 to 10, the only remuneration an agent may receive is the cost of advertising carried out at the client's own request, and MLIT's guidance names what that rules out: a viewing fee (案内料), an application fee (申込料), and the cost of advertising the client did not ask for. Ordinary advertising and ordinary investigation of the property are the agent's own cost, not yours.

That is not the same as saying nothing may ever be passed through. The same guidance is explicit that item 11 does not prohibit separately receiving the actual expenses of work the client specially requested, such as a site investigation in a remote location or a special investigation of a vacant house, provided the client agreed in advance to bear them. The agent should give you an estimate before incurring them, and those costs can be charged whether or not a sale completes. So the line to hold is not "nothing above the commission": it is that a pre-agreed, itemised, actual expense for work you asked for is legitimate, while a flat fee bolted onto the commission is not.

The cap applies to each client separately, which MLIT's interpretative guidance spells out: an agent acting for both seller and buyer may lawfully charge each of them up to the full amount. Agency (代理) rather than brokerage is capped at twice the brokerage figure under the third item of the notice, but that item carries a proviso worth knowing: where the agent also takes a fee from the other side of the transaction, the fee from its own principal and the fee from the counterparty together may not exceed twice the brokerage figure. Twice the cap is the ceiling on the total, not an entitlement to that much from you on top of whatever the other side pays. The eighth item applies the same proviso to agency on a 低廉な空家等.

There is one special rule that matters enormously if you are buying a cheap rural house, and it is routinely mistaken for overcharging. Under the seventh item of the notice, for a 低廉な空家等 the agent may exceed the ordinary calculation and charge up to ¥330,000 including tax (expressed in the notice as 1.1 times ¥300,000). MLIT's guidance defines 低廉な空家等 as a property with a price of ¥8,000,000 or less, and states expressly that whether the property is actually vacant does not matter despite the name. Note how the threshold is measured: the notice takes the sale price excluding consumption tax on the property itself, so on a taxable building sale a contract total slightly above ¥8,000,000 can still be inside the threshold. The ¥330,000 is a ceiling, not an entitlement. The notice lets the agent exceed the ordinary calculation having regard to the costs the brokerage requires, and MLIT's guidance reads that as requiring the fee to be set with the expected level of those costs in mind, according to the form and difficulty of the transaction, while not insisting the fee match them exactly. A routine, straightforward sale is a fair reason to ask why the figure is at the maximum. The effect is still substantial: on a ¥3,000,000 akiya the ordinary cap is ¥154,000, while this rule permits up to ¥330,000. At exactly ¥8,000,000 the two coincide, both landing on ¥330,000. Both of those are taxable-business figures: for an exempt agency the equivalents are ¥140,000 and ¥300,000 before the input-tax addition of up to 4 per cent. The guidance also requires the agent to explain and agree the figure with you in advance, when the brokerage contract is signed, so a fee of this size appearing later in the process is a legitimate question to raise.

Where you sign can matter, but less often than people think

Article 37-2 gives a buyer a cooling-off right: where the offer to buy was made somewhere other than the firm's office or another prescribed place, the buyer may withdraw in writing, the notice takes effect when dispatched, and the firm may not claim damages or a penalty. The right is lost eight days after the buyer is told of it in writing in the prescribed manner, or once the buyer has taken delivery and paid the price in full, and any contrary term disadvantaging the buyer is void.

The limit that gets missed is in the opening words: it applies only where the licensed firm is itself the seller (自ら売主). In the common foreign-buyer case, where an agency brokers a sale by a private owner, there is no cooling-off right at all. This is why the prescribed sign at a temporary sales office or exhibition venue must carry a cooling-off notice in characters at least 2cm square when the venue does not meet the regulation's requirements: the notice exists precisely because the right turns on where and from whom you bought.

A workable order for checking an agent, before money moves:

1. Get the authorisation number in writing. Ask for the full licence number including the authority and the parenthetical count, plus the registered trading name. If the counterparty is one of the exceptions above, ask for the number it actually holds:

   • a trust company or trust bank: its 届出番号 and notification date;
   • a registered investment corporation (J-REIT) or an Article 77-3 特例事業者: neither holds an Article 3 licence nor a trust notification, so ask which firm manages its assets or runs the delegated business. That firm is an 認可宅地建物取引業者, a licensed 宅建業者 holding the Minister's approval for 取引一任代理等 under Article 50-2, and Article 8, paragraph 2, item 3 records that approval and its date in the register, so it is the party you can actually look up. Confirm the entity's own registration or permission with the authority that grants it under its governing Act;
   • a public body: it may have no such number at all.

   Reluctance to put the relevant number in an email has answered the question.

2. Search the national register. Use MLIT's 建設業者・宅建業者等企業情報検索システム by company name or by licence number. Confirm the authority, the number and the representative's name match what you were told, and confirm that the specific office you are dealing with appears as one of the rows. This search is the wrong tool for the exceptions above: its official manual states that it covers Minister-licensed and governor-licensed firms, so a notification-registered trust business can return nothing here even though its notification is perfectly valid. For one of those, use Tokyo's service where the trader is listed there, or ask the relevant Ministry bureau directly, and expect a 届出番号 rather than a licence number.

3. Search the disposition record. Use MLIT's ネガティブ情報等検索サイト page for 宅地建物取引業者. Remember the five-year window and the roughly monthly refresh. Then check the own-site disposition page of each prefecture where the firm has an office or where your transaction is happening, not just the one that issued the licence: under Article 65, paragraphs 3 and 4 a governor can sanction a Minister-licensed firm, or one licensed by another governor, for conduct in that prefecture, so a Minister-licensed firm can have a prefectural disposition too.

4. If the firm is in Tokyo's register, cross-check Tokyo's own service. It covers Tokyo governor licences, Minister licences and notification-registered traders, and it gives you more than the national search does: a details tab with the licence validity period, the date the first licence was granted, whether the licensee is a corporation or an individual, and the capital stated at application; an offices tab marking the head office; and a dispositions tab that either lists supervisory dispositions or says there are none. It also shows the date its data was last updated.

5. Look at the wall. At the office, the Article 50 sign gives you the licence validity period, which the national search does not show, plus the staffing ratio you can sanity-check against the one-fifth rule. The commission schedule should be on display too. For a Tokyo licensee you can get the validity period online instead, from step 4.

6. Ask for the card and the employee register. Article 48 entitles you to see an employee's identification card and to inspect the office's employee register. Asking is normal and a licensed firm will not find it strange.

7. At the pre-contract explanation, check the explainer. The person delivering the Article 35 explanation must be a 宅地建物取引士 and must present their card unprompted. Read the document before signing anything. Both requirements hold if the explanation is given remotely: the card is shown on camera and you confirm you can read it, and the document must have reached you in advance.

8. Cross-check the disclosure against the register. Article 35, paragraph 1, item 1 requires the statement to set out the registered rights on the property and the name of the 登記名義人 or of the owner recorded in the 表題部, the description section. The second limb matters for a building that has a title registration but no ownership-preservation registration: there is no 甲区 owner to compare, and the name you check is the 表題部所有者. That is a factual claim about a public record, and it is the item you can most readily verify yourself, which is what the next section is about. It is not the only one: the statutory restrictions disclosed under item 2, a planned city road for instance, can be checked against the municipality's own publicly inspectable planning information.

9. Agree the commission in writing before engaging. Confirm which cap applies, and if the price excluding consumption tax on the property is ¥8,000,000 or less, establish in the brokerage contract whether the 低廉な空家等 rule is being used.

Three mistakes recur. The first is treating a staff member's 宅建士 qualification as proof the business is licensed; they are different things and only the licensed business appears in the register. The second is reading a clean disposition search as a clean history, when it only covers five years and MLIT itself warns the data may be incomplete. The third is assuming a cooling-off right exists; it does not, unless the licensed firm is the seller.

The registration record is where the agent's own disclosure stops being a claim and becomes checkable.

• What it shows reliably: the registered rights on the property, spread across both rights sections, which is why you read both. 甲区 is the ownership section: the current registered owner and their registered address, and also any seizure (差押え) and any provisional registration concerning ownership. Where a building has only a title registration and no ownership-preservation registration, 甲区 is empty and the owner's name appears in the 表題部 instead. 乙区 covers rights other than ownership, mortgages above all, along with provisional registrations of those. A clean 乙区 therefore proves nothing about a seizure or a competing ownership claim sitting in 甲区. Article 35, paragraph 1, item 1 obliges the agent to state the registered rights and the registered titleholder in the pre-contract document, so ordering the record yourself turns a disclosure you are asked to trust into one you have verified. A seller's name that does not match the register, or an entry on the record that is absent from the disclosure, is a conversation to have before any deposit moves.
• What it does not show: anything about the agent. The licence, its validity period, the firm's disciplinary history and its guarantee association membership are in the licence register and the disposition search, not the property register. It also will not tell you whether the price is reasonable or whether the commission being quoted is lawful.
• How to order it: find the parcel with our free lot-number lookup, which resolves an address to a reference point and returns whichever parcel contains it, so treat the result as a starting point rather than a confirmed match. Then order the land registration record through Japan Property Research for ¥1,500, and the building record separately, also ¥1,500, if there is a structure. Both arrive by email, so you can read the register before the pre-contract explanation rather than after it, and compare the two line by line.

Ordering the record before the explanation, rather than after, is the whole point. The Article 35 document is delivered at a moment when you are expected to sign shortly afterwards. Walking into that meeting already knowing who the register says owns the property, and what is charged against it, changes what you are able to ask.

For a transaction complicated by an unclear ownership chain, an encumbrance you do not recognise, or a firm whose register entry does not match what you were told, confirm the position with the Legal Affairs Bureau or a judicial scrivener (司法書士) before you commit, rather than relying on general guidance.

FAQ

Is a 宅地建物取引士 the same as a licensed agency? No, and this is the most common confusion. The 宅地建物取引業者 is the licensed business holding the licence under Article 3, and it is what appears in the public register. That is usually a company, but Article 4, paragraph 1 allows an individual applicant too, so a sole proprietor may be licensed in their own name. The 宅地建物取引士 is an individual with a professional qualification, who carries a personal card and is the only person who may deliver the Article 35 pre-contract explanation. A business can employ qualified individuals and still not be properly licensed, so check the business itself.

Is a Minister's licence better than a prefectural governor's licence? No. Under Article 3, paragraph 1 the distinction is purely about where the firm has offices: two or more prefectures means a Minister's licence, one prefecture means that governor's licence. A single-office agency in Kyoto with decades of history will hold a governor's licence, and that says nothing bad about it.

What does the number in brackets in a licence number mean? It is the licence count: the first licence is (1) and the number rises by one on each renewal, per Tokyo's official licence information service. It counts renewals under the current licensing authority, not the firm's age. Changing authority, which happens when a firm opens an office in another prefecture or contracts back to one, is a 免許換え and is filed as a new licence (MLIT's guidance groups a governor-to-Minister conversion under 新規), so the count restarts at (1) for a business that has traded for decades. Do not convert it into years or use it to rank two firms. For a licensee in Tokyo's register you do not need to: its details tab gives the first-licence date recorded there.

The disposition search returns nothing. Is the firm clean? It means no disposition has been published there in the last five years. The site keeps five years of records, refreshes roughly monthly, publishes 免許取消, 業務停止 and 指示, and MLIT warns that some local authorities do not publish through it. Because a governor can sanction a firm licensed by the Minister or another governor for conduct in that prefecture, check the own-site page of each prefecture where the firm operates, not only the licensing one; check that prefecture's own page too, and the licensing authority can be asked directly.

An agent wants ¥330,000 commission on a ¥3,000,000 akiya. Is that legal? It can be, if the agency is a taxable business. The ordinary tiered cap would give ¥154,000, but the seventh item of the commission notice allows up to ¥330,000 including tax for a 低廉な空家等, which MLIT defines as a property priced at ¥8,000,000 or less, measured excluding consumption tax on the property, whether or not it is actually vacant. If the agency is exempt from consumption tax, the eleventh item applies instead and the ceiling is ¥300,000 plus input tax of at most 4 per cent, so ¥330,000 would be too much. Two conditions attach. The agent must explain and agree the amount with you in advance, when the brokerage contract is signed, so a figure appearing for the first time at completion fails that test. And the amount has to be set having regard to the costs the brokerage is expected to require, given the form and difficulty of the transaction, so the maximum is not automatic on a straightforward sale.

Can I cancel after signing because I signed at a café? Usually not. The Article 37-2 cooling-off right applies only where the licensed firm is itself the seller. Where the firm is brokering a sale by a private owner, which is the usual arrangement, the right does not arise regardless of where you signed.

Can I check all this from overseas? Most of it, yes. The national licence register, the disposition search and Tokyo's service are free, public and need no Japanese residency or account. More usefully, the pre-contract explanation itself can be done remotely: under MLIT's IT重要事項説明 procedure the 宅建士 holds their 宅建士証 up to the camera and must confirm you could read it on your screen, and you need to be able to read the name on the card and see that the photograph matches the face on the call. The explanation document has to reach you beforehand, and Article 35, paragraph 8 allows it to be provided electronically with your consent. What genuinely needs someone on site is the premises: the Article 50 sign on the wall and the employee register. Ask your representative in Japan for those two, or request the sign's details in writing.

Related guides:

• How To Verify A Property Seller Is The Real Owner In Japan
• Red Flags For Foreign Buyers Of Japanese Property
• Japan Property Due Diligence Checklist
• How To Read A Japanese Property Registration Record

Official sources first. Statutory text was read from the e-Gov law database, which carries the current consolidated version of each law.

• e-Gov: Real Estate Brokerage Act (宅地建物取引業法), Act No. 176 of 1952, current text. Digital Agency e-Gov law database, official. Article 3 (licensing authority, the five-year term, renewal), Article 4 (the licence application items), Articles 8 and 10 (the register, the recording of dispositions in it, and public inspection), Article 12 (unlicensed business and advertising), Article 22-4 (presenting the 宅建士証 on request), Article 25 (the business deposit and the bar on trading before it is filed), Article 31-3 (full-time 宅建士 per office), Article 35 (the pre-contract explanation and the unprompted presentation of the card), Article 35-2 (explanation of the deposit office or guarantee association), Article 37-2 (cooling-off, and its limitation to sales where the licensee is itself the seller), Article 46 (commission limits and the display duty), Article 47 (prohibited acts), Article 48 (employee identification cards and the employee register), Article 49 (the transaction ledger), Article 50 (the prescribed sign), Article 50-2 (the Minister's approval for 取引一任代理等, creating the 認可宅地建物取引業者 that manages a J-REIT's assets or a 特例事業者's delegated business, recorded in the register by art. 8(2)(iii)), Article 64-8 (compensation payouts and the certification requirement), Article 64-9 (association contributions), Article 65 (instructions and suspension, including a governor's power over firms licensed elsewhere), Article 66, paragraph 1 (mandatory revocation), Article 77 (the trust-company exception: outside Arts. 3 to 7 and 12, notification to the Minister, and deemed Minister-licensed for the rest), Article 77-2 (registered investment corporations) and Article 77-3 (特例事業者), both deemed Minister-licensed but with Arts. 31-3, 35, 35-2, 37 and 48 to 50 also switched off, Article 78 (the Act does not apply to the national or local governments, and Arts. 33-2 and 37-2 to 43 do not apply between licensed traders), Article 79 (penalties for unlicensed business, obtaining a licence by wrongful means, and trading under a suspension order).
• e-Gov: Order for Enforcement of the Real Estate Brokerage Act (宅地建物取引業法施行令), Cabinet Order No. 383 of 1964. Digital Agency e-Gov law database, official. Article 2-4 (business deposit of ¥10,000,000 for the head office and ¥5,000,000 per other office), Article 7 (guarantee association contributions of ¥600,000 and ¥300,000), Article 9 (banks conducting trust business and special trust companies: notification to the Minister, and deemed Minister-licensed subject to a condition confining the activity to their trust business).
• e-Gov: Regulation for Enforcement of the Real Estate Brokerage Act (宅地建物取引業法施行規則), Ministry of Construction Ordinance No. 12 of 1957. Digital Agency e-Gov law database, official. Article 3 (renewal applications filed between 90 and 30 days before expiry), Article 5 (the register inspection office), Article 15-5-3 (full-time 宅建士 at one fifth or more of staff at an office), Article 19 (where signs must be posted and which prescribed form applies), Article 31-2 (substituting 様式第二十七号 and its siblings for a financial institution also conducting trust business), Article 17-2 (employee register contents).
• 建設業者・宅建業者等企業情報検索システム. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. The national licence register search. Its explanatory note confirms it carries both Minister-licensed and governor-licensed firms; results return the licensing authority, licence number, trading name, representative, office name and address, one row per office.
• ネガティブ情報等検索サイト（宅地建物取引業者）. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. The disposition search. Its notice states the publishing bodies, the published disposition types (免許取消, 業務停止, 指示), the five-year retention, the roughly monthly refresh, that some local authorities do not publish through the site, and lists 23 prefectures that publish on their own sites as well.
• ＜消費者の皆様向け＞不動産取引に関するお知らせ. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. Consumer guidance pointing to both searches, and the caution that the disposition data may be incomplete and the licensing authority can be asked directly.
• 宅地建物取引業者が宅地又は建物の売買等に関して受けることができる報酬の額 (Ministry of Construction Notice No. 1552 of 1970, last amended by MLIT Notice No. 949 of 21 June 2024). Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. Item 2 (the 5.5, 4.4 and 3.3 per cent tiers, stated inclusive of consumption tax, per client side), item 3 (agency at twice brokerage), item 3's proviso (the principal's fee and the counterparty's fee combined may not exceed twice the brokerage amount), item 7 (低廉な空家等 at up to 1.1 times ¥300,000), item 8 (agency at twice that, with the same proviso), item 11(1) (no remuneration beyond items 2 to 10 except client-requested advertising), item 11(2) (an exempt business's cap: 100/110 of the items 2 to 10 amount plus input consumption tax).
• 宅地建物取引業法の解釈・運用の考え方 (version in force from 1 April 2026). Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. On Article 46(1): the cap applies to each client separately; 低廉な空家等 means a price of ¥8,000,000 or less and the state of use does not matter; the agent must explain and agree the amount in advance when the brokerage contract is concluded. On Article 46(4): digital signage may satisfy the display duty. On exempt businesses: the input consumption tax component is limited to 0.04 times the tax-exclusive amount. On Article 46(1) and item 11: a viewing fee, an application fee and unrequested advertising may not be charged, ordinary advertising and investigation are the agent's own cost, and item 11 does not prohibit separately receiving the actual expenses of specially requested work (a remote site investigation, a special vacant-house investigation) where the client agreed in advance to bear them.
• ＩＴを活用した重要事項説明実施マニュアル. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. The remote pre-contract explanation: the 宅建士 holds the card to the camera and confirms the recipient could read it on screen, the recipient must be able to read the name and match the photograph to the face on the call, and the explanation document must be delivered (electronically or otherwise) in advance.
• 宅地建物取引業者票様式. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. 様式第九号, the office sign: minimum 35cm by 25cm, carrying the licence number, licence validity period, trading name, representative, this office's representative, the count of full-time 宅建士 against staff, and the head office address. 様式第十号 and 第十一号の二 carry the cooling-off wording required at 2cm square. 様式第二十七号 is the trust-business sign, carrying a 届出番号 and notification date instead of a licence number.
• 宅地建物取引業者免許情報提供サービス. Tokyo Metropolitan Government, official. Covers Tokyo governor licences, Minister licences and notification-registered traders. Its help page states that the parenthetical figure is the 回次, that the first licence is (1), and that it rises by one per renewal. Its details tab additionally shows the licence validity period, the first-licence date, the 法人・個人の別 flag and the capital at application, with an offices tab and a dispositions tab, and it prints the date the data was last updated.
• e-Gov: Order for Enforcement of the Urban Renaissance Agency Act (独立行政法人都市再生機構法施行令), Article 34 and Order for Enforcement of the Local Housing Supply Corporation Act (地方住宅供給公社法施行令), Article 2. Digital Agency e-Gov law database, official. Both list Real Estate Brokerage Act art. 78(1) among the provisions applied to the entity as though it were the state or a local authority.
• 建設産業・不動産業：宅地建物取引の免許について. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, official. Overview of the licensing system.
• 宅地建物取引業（不動産業係）. MLIT Chubu Regional Development Bureau, official. Treats a Minister's licence application as 新規（知事免許からの免許換えを含む）, which is why a change of licensing authority restarts the 回次.

A note on scope: the licence registers and the disposition site are maintained by the Ministry and by each prefecture on different update cycles, so a very recent licence change or disposition may not appear immediately in either. The Ministry states the disposition data is refreshed roughly monthly and that some local authorities do not publish through the site. Whether a specific firm's conduct amounts to a breach of the Act, and what remedy is available in a particular dispute, is a case-by-case question for the licensing authority, a consumer affairs centre, or a lawyer, rather than something a general guide can settle. For a transaction where the ownership chain or an encumbrance is unclear, confirm the position with the Legal Affairs Bureau or a judicial scrivener (司法書士).