The first time a tenant moved out of one of my units without leaving a forwarding address, it cost me four phone calls and about 55,000 yen in extra utility charges before I figured out where the final gas bill needed to go. That was roughly seven years ago, and it is the reason every one of my 9 rental properties now gets a proper handover packet the day a new tenant collects the keys. It is not a fancy binder, just a clear plastic folder with about a dozen pages inside, but it saves me two or three phone calls a month and stops small confusion from turning into a real dispute six months down the line.
I put the packet together in about 45 minutes per unit, and I reuse close to 70 percent of the content from the previous tenant, so it is not the time sink new landlords assume it is. Over 15 years of doing this, I have refined the packet down to the things tenants actually need and left out everything else. Here is exactly what goes into mine, section by section.
Why I Bother With a Handover Packet at All
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After 15 years of self-managing these units, I have noticed that most first-month tenant complaints come from confusion, not from real problems with the property. A tenant who does not know where the water shutoff valve is will call me at 9pm over a minor leak instead of handling it themselves in under a minute. A packet that answers the ten or so questions every new tenant has cuts those calls by more than half, at least in my own record-keeping over the last three years, and it means the calls I do get are usually about something that genuinely needs my attention.
The Move-In Condition Report
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This is the single most important page in the folder, and it is the one I never skip, even for a one-year lease. I walk the unit with my phone camera two days before handover and take 20 to 30 photos: every wall, the flooring in each room, the inside of the kitchen cabinets, and any existing scuffs or marks. I print six of the most relevant photos and staple them to a one-page condition report with the date and a short note next to each item, such as small scratch on the kitchen counter, roughly 3cm. This single page has saved me from three separate deposit disputes since I started doing it, because the tenant signs it on move-in day and there is no argument later about whether a mark was already there.
Utilities, Locks, and the Practical Stuff
New tenants, especially anyone moving to the area for the first time, need the basics spelled out clearly or they end up calling me instead of the utility company. My packet includes a single sheet with the electricity company account number, the gas company phone number, and the water utility contact, plus a note on which of the four breakers in the panel controls which room. I also include two spare keys in a small envelope and a note explaining that a lost key replacement costs the tenant around 8,000 yen, since I switched to that policy after replacing four locks out of my own pocket in a single year.
The Local Info Sheet
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Property Inspection Forms & Checklists
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This is the page tenants seem to appreciate most, and it takes me the least time to prepare. It covers the garbage collection schedule, since every city here has different rules; for example, burnable trash, or moeru gomi, goes out on Tuesdays and Fridays before 8am, while recyclables are collected every other Thursday. I also list the nearest supermarket, the closest train station with a walking time in minutes, and the number for the building management company if the unit is in a larger complex. None of this is complicated information, but a tenant who has to hunt for it themselves in the first week forms a worse impression of the whole rental experience.
House Rules and the Simple Checklist
I keep the house rules to one page, because a packet nobody reads is worthless. Instead of paragraphs, I use a short checklist tenants can scan in under two minutes:
- Confirm the smoke detector battery and test it together on move-in day
- Note the location of the main water shutoff and gas shutoff valves
- Record the current gas and electric meter readings on the condition report
- Review quiet hours, generally 10pm to 7am in most of my buildings
- Confirm the parking spot number and any assigned bicycle storage space
- Exchange contact numbers for non-emergency repair requests
Going through this list together, in person, takes about 15 minutes, and it means the tenant has already met me once before anything goes wrong, which makes that first phone call far less stressful for both of us.
When I Actually Hand It Over
Timing matters more than people expect. I do not hand the packet over with the keys and leave; I sit with the tenant for those 15 minutes and walk through the folder page by page. Handing it over silently means maybe 20 percent of tenants actually read it. Walking through it together gets that number close to 100 percent, and it gives me a chance to catch anything on the move-in condition report that we might disagree on before the lease even starts, rather than 12 months later at move-out.
That is the approach I use across all 9 of my properties, and it is the single habit that has cut my landlord phone calls the most since I started doing it.
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