How trying to buy a house in Japan led me to map 13k+ Airbnb-licensed properties + all local regulations files — AMA

My wife and I recently started house-hunting here in Japan. Even though I can read Japanese, using property sites was painful — slow, clunky, and scattered info. So I built a natural language search tool for myself: I want a small room for 1 in Shibuya around 80k yen → instant results. When I shared this on LinkedIn, property managers started reaching out. One introduced me to his Minpaku (short-term rental) workflow: \- Download city PDFs/Excels \- Manually check zoning, school zones, license feasibility As an engineer, I thought: *This should not be manual.* I went deep and built: * A **clean database + map of 13k+ licensed Minpaku properties (Tokyo, Sapporo, more coming)** * A **unified database of the scattered municipal regulations** * Now, I can layer those + see where Minpaku is possible, and where it’s blocked # What’s next? I’ve made this into [MinpakuTrends.com](https://www.minpakutrends.com/) — for now you can explore the data/map. I’m still figuring out how best to release: * A Q&A chatbot for Minpaku regulations * A tool where you drop an address → get license feasibility instantly # AMA If you’re: * Looking into Japan Airbnb/Minpaku investing * Curious how the data works * Wondering about regulation quirks or my build process Ask away! Always happy to chat. --- **Post Details:** - **Subreddit:** r/digitalnomad - **Author:** u/Overall-Editor-4069 - **Score:** 49 upvotes - **Upvote Ratio:** 74.0% - **Comments:** 10 - **Posted:** 7/7/2025 - **URL:** https://reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/1ltmt7b/how_trying_to_buy_a_house_in_japan_led_me_to_map/