Every time a tenant moves out, I walk the unit with a flashlight and a notepad, and the first question I ask myself is whether this is a 15,000 yen touch-up job or a 180,000 yen full repaint. Get that call wrong too often across 9 properties and you either bleed cash on paint you didn’t need, or you hand the next tenant a place that looks tired before they’ve even signed the lease.
I don’t repaint on a fixed schedule anymore. I used to, back when I owned just two units, and I wasted money doing full repaints every 4 years whether the walls needed it or not. Now I use a set of concrete triggers, and I want to walk through exactly what they are.
The scuff test I run in every room
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I stand about 2 meters back from each wall under normal daylight, not under a bright inspection light, because that’s how a prospective tenant will actually see the room. If I count more than roughly 8 to 10 visible scuffs, scrapes, or discoloration patches per wall, that wall is getting repainted, not patched. Anything under that, and a 3,000 yen tube of matching touch-up paint and a small roller handles it in under an hour.
How long the tenant lived there
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Tenancy length changes the math more than almost anything else. A tenant who stayed 2 years usually leaves walls in decent shape, maybe some furniture rub marks near the bed frame or sofa. A tenant who stayed 7 or 8 years is a different story entirely, even if they were tidy, because paint itself degrades. Interior latex paint in a typical Japanese apartment starts yellowing and losing its sheen somewhere around the 6 to 8 year mark, especially in kitchens and near windows where UV and cooking oil vapor both take a toll. I now treat any unit that hasn’t been touched in 7 years as an automatic full repaint, no inspection required, because I already know what I’ll find.
Kitchen and smoking damage are non-negotiable
Two situations skip my scuff test entirely and go straight to full repaint. First, any kitchen wall with visible yellow-brown grease film, which shows up in roughly 1 out of every 4 units I turn over. You can’t spot-treat grease staining; it bleeds through touch-up paint within a few months and looks worse than doing nothing. Second, any unit where a tenant smoked indoors, even if they were supposedly smoking near an open window. Nicotine residue seeps into the wall surface and will yellow through a fresh coat unless you prime with a stain-blocking sealer first, which adds about 25% to the job cost but is not optional if you skip it the smell comes back within a year.
My cost math: full repaint versus touch-up
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For a standard 1K or 1DK unit around 25 square meters, here’s roughly what I’m comparing when I decide:
- Touch-up (paint plus my own labor, one afternoon): about 4,000 to 8,000 yen
- Full repaint hiring a local painter for walls and ceiling: 150,000 to 200,000 yen
- Full repaint doing it myself over a weekend, materials only: 35,000 to 45,000 yen
- Lost rent from an extra week of vacancy while paint dries and airs out: often 15,000 to 25,000 yen depending on the unit
Because the gap between touch-up and full repaint is so large, I only greenlight the full job when at least two of my triggers line up together, long tenancy plus visible grease, or heavy scuffing plus an upcoming rent increase where I want the unit to show well in photos.
Exterior repaints run on a completely different clock
Interior walls are about tenant wear, but exterior repaints are about the building material itself. I repaint exterior siding roughly every 10 to 12 years regardless of how it looks, because that’s when the waterproof coating underneath actually fails, not just the surface color. I learned this the hard way on one property where the paint still looked fine at year 13, but water had already gotten behind it and caused about 90,000 yen of hidden wood rot repair on top of the repaint itself. Now I mark exterior repaint dates on a calendar the day I finish the job, not based on appearance.
The walkthrough checklist I actually use
To keep myself consistent across all 9 properties, I run through the same short list every single turnover before deciding:
- Years since last repaint (7+ years leans toward full repaint)
- Kitchen wall grease or yellowing present
- Evidence of indoor smoking
- Scuff count per wall from 2 meters away
- Whether I’m raising rent on the next listing, which raises my tolerance for spending on presentation
If three or more of these point toward a full repaint, I stop debating and just book it. Indecision is the expensive part, not the paint.
That’s the framework I run across all 9 of my properties, and it’s kept my paint spending predictable instead of reactive.
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