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Laws Related to Real Estate Transactions in Japan

●Laws Concerning Land Use●

There are a variety of laws concerning land use.
​The following shows the major laws regulating land use (purpose of use), development projects and their transactions.

City Planning Act (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism)

The City Planning Act has designated such city planning areas as urbanization promotion areas and urbanization control areas, as well as the purposes of land use in the urbanization promotion areas and other matters, in order to prevent towns from being developed in an disorderly manner and becoming harder to live in. ​For the urbanization promotion areas, there are regulations that affect construction of buildings, such as the building coverage ratio and the floor-area ratio of buildings as well as the purposes of land use.

National Land Use Planning Act (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism)

The National Land Use Planning Act is a law aimed at realizing comprehensive and systematic use of the national land in order to prevent speculative land transactions, disorganized development or other inappropriate actions in advance. ​With regard to real estate transactions, the law prescribes that any sale, purchase or exchange of lands having more than a certain degree of size must be filed, among other regulations.