Somewhere in the relocation process, most transferees run into a version of the same question: should I be working with a relocation agency, a local real estate broker, or both? The two are often confused, partly because global mobility companies and destination service providers use language — "housing search," "area orientation," "settling-in support" — that sounds a lot like what a real estate agency does. In practice, they solve different problems, and understanding the difference before you sign up for (and pay for) one or the other can save a genuine amount of money and frustration.
A relocation agency — sometimes called a destination service provider, often working as a subcontractor to a larger global mobility company — is built to manage the breadth of a move, not the depth of any single piece of it. A typical engagement covers area orientation tours, school search support for relocating families, help opening a bank account, guidance on registering at a ward office, and, yes, housing search assistance as one item among several. The value proposition is coordination: a single point of contact who can answer questions across the whole relocation, paid for by the employer as part of a broader relocation budget, freeing HR from having to manage a dozen separate local vendors directly.
This is genuinely useful for the parts of a relocation that have nothing to do with real estate — figuring out which train line to commute on before you've chosen a neighborhood, understanding how city hall registration works, finding an international school with an open place for your child's age group. Where it tends to be thinner is in the actual mechanics of the Osaka rental market specifically, because most relocation agencies operate across many cities and countries, and Osaka housing — with its stacked upfront costs, guarantor company requirements, and highly local, building-by-building variation in what landlords will accept from foreign tenants — is a specialized niche within a specialized niche. In practice, many relocation agencies handle the housing component by subcontracting it to a local real estate agency anyway, which means you may already be paying, indirectly, for the exact kind of local expertise you'd otherwise engage directly.
A broker like Maido Estate works the other end of the same problem: narrow in scope, deep in local knowledge. That means understanding, building by building, which landlords and management companies genuinely accept foreign tenants without excessive friction, which guarantor companies work well for which income and visa profiles, what a specific listing's real, all-in move-in cost will be before you commit, and how to negotiate the parts of a lease that actually have room to move — for many landlords, reikin and lease start dates among them — versus the parts that don't.
A specialized local broker generally isn't going to help you enroll your child in school or set up a bank account, though many, including us, will happily point you toward the right resources for both. What a good local broker changes is the single highest-stakes, highest-cost, most locally specific part of a relocation: securing housing that actually fits your budget, your family, and your guarantor situation, without the missteps that come from applying generic international relocation knowledge to a market that doesn't follow generic rules.
Relocation agencies are typically paid a retainer or a project fee by the employer, calculated as part of the overall relocation budget — a cost the employee often never sees directly, bundled into HR's spending rather than the employee's own transaction. A local real estate broker's fee, by contrast, is a legally capped commission tied directly to the lease or purchase itself, paid at signing, and clearly itemized alongside the other move-in costs. Neither structure is inherently better, but they answer different questions: the relocation agency's fee buys coordination across the whole move; the broker's fee buys expertise and negotiation specifically on the housing transaction.
This distinction matters most for independent movers and smaller companies without an established corporate relocation budget, who may not have access to a full-service relocation agency at all, and for whom going directly to a specialized local broker is simply the more direct, cost-effective path to securing housing — without paying for area orientation or school-search services they may not need.
The scenario worth watching for specifically is the one where a company has already engaged a relocation agency for the full settling-in package, and the employee — uncertain whether the housing search is being handled well — separately reaches out to a local broker on their own, without checking whether the relocation agency has already subcontracted that exact work to a local partner. This isn't fraud on anyone's part; it's simply a structural blind spot in how multi-layered relocation services get assembled. The practical fix is straightforward: ask your relocation agency directly, early, whether they handle the Osaka housing search in-house or through a local subcontractor, and if it's the latter, ask who that partner is. In some cases, going directly to that local partner — or to another one you trust — rather than through an added layer of coordination, gets you faster answers and clearer, unfiltered advice about what a specific building or guarantor company will actually accept.
For a corporate transferee with a family, using both isn't redundant — it's often the right structure, as long as each one is doing the part it's actually good at. A relocation agency's area orientation and school search work is genuinely valuable groundwork before you narrow down neighborhoods; a specialized local broker then takes that narrowed-down picture and turns it into an actual, secured lease with the right guarantor company and a realistic understanding of the total cost. The mistake is expecting either one to do the other's job well — asking a generalist relocation agency to negotiate Osaka-specific lease terms with the depth of a specialized local broker, or asking a housing-focused broker to manage your child's school enrollment.
At Maido Estate, we work with corporate transferees, their relocation agencies, and independent movers alike, and we're direct about which parts of a move fall inside our expertise and which don't. If you want a clear-eyed read on what your specific relocation actually needs on the housing side — whether or not a relocation agency is already involved — we're happy to have that conversation, in English, French, or Japanese.
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