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The story
On September 28, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) determined that two design-consulting firms and 40 renovation contractors — 42 companies in total — had repeatedly engaged in bid-rigging in violation of the Antitrust Act (unreasonable restraint of trade) over large-scale renovation work ordered by condominium management unions in the Kanto region. The commission issued cease-and-desist orders to 38 of the companies and ordered the contractors that won the work to pay a combined total of roughly ¥1.638 billion in surcharges. So that residents can check whether their own building is affected, the JFTC published the names of 171 buildings across Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures on its website. On the thread, users swapped stories of management-union board chairmen colluding with contractors, voiced frustration that antitrust violations don’t lead to arrests, and argued over the claim that “if every contractor charges a high price, isn’t that just the going rate?”
9/28 (Mon) 15:30
Yomiuri Shimbun
The Japan Fair Trade Commission announced on the 28th that it had found two design-consulting firms and 40 renovation contractors in violation of the Antitrust Act (unreasonable restraint of trade) over repeated bid-rigging on large-scale renovation work ordered by condominium management unions in the Kanto region, issuing cease-and-desist orders demanding prevention of recurrence to 38 of the companies. It also ordered the renovation contractors that won the work to pay a combined ¥1.638 billion in surcharges.
Source: topics.smt.docomo.ne.jp / Original article here
What people said
Most tower condos won't face this for a while yet, no? It's the older, more aged buildings that are getting hit directly.
Then just post the link already.
What a useless article.
Leaving it to someone else like that isn't great. It's easy to look up yourself.
Search "Japan Fair Trade Commission," go to the official site → on the homepage under "Featured Information" there's an entry dated September 28 → Attachments 1 and 2, the "Cease and Desist Orders," have it all listed.
Though right now the site's overloaded and barely loading. Probably condo residents and industry people alike are all rushing to look it up right after seeing the news.
Not really an issue, is it?
Apparently as long as the board chairman signs off, the rank-and-file union members are just supposed to shut up and go along with it.
Well, once you've got the condo board chairman in your pocket, it's smooth sailing.
Nobody gets arrested, and if things get dicey you can just fold the company and vanish — whoever does it wins.
> 60 Anonymous Donburako 2026/09/28 (Mon) 23:29:16.89 ID:Esg1UICX0
> Safety in numbers, I guess.
> Nobody gets arrested, and if things get dicey you can just fold the company and vanish — whoever does it wins.
Seriously, that's exactly it.
You don't get arrested — not under the Antitrust Act.
Seriously? The law's basically cutting them slack.
Even if you push back against the management company or consultant and go find contractors yourselves, it's pretty common that they turn out to know the management company anyway — but at least then you're the most satisfied it's legit, and it tends to work out.
But once that becomes routine too, you end up with the contractor and the board chairman getting cozy with each other instead.
And then they switch to self-management and the whole thing collapses.
You see it a lot these days. It's an era where even condo caretakers and cleaning staff are often foreign workers now.
Exterior wall renovation crews have been full of foreign workers for 20 years already. Calling it "training" is a joke.
Places where a simple LED bulb swap into the existing socket would've been fine, they deliberately picked parts that meant replacing the whole fixture base for LED fittings instead.
The hallway lights got swapped for battery-backup models too, supposedly for emergencies — but a few years later it turned out the batteries needed replacing, and that job cost over a million yen as well.
It's a whole system built for contractors to rake it in.
I really regret not being on the board back then.
This is exactly like my building! So they're pulling the same stuff at other condos too.
If you feel that strongly about it, you should run for the board right now, no matter what, and work to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. Sorry if you're already on the board.
If every single one quotes rip-off prices, isn't that just… the market rate?
That's exactly what this bid-rigging is. All the big names lined up together.
If that were true, it wouldn't have been ruled an antitrust violation. This was clearly over the line, which is why the government stepped in.
If they don't get you replacing things on a set schedule, they can't keep their construction crews employed — so they make you replace stuff even when it isn't broken.
Of course there's a lot of lying, it's that kind of business — construction and real-estate types are scummy like that.
Background and key points of this story
Large-scale renovation work has long been prone to collusion between design consultants and construction contractors, because the decision on contracts worth tens of millions of yen is made by the condo’s management union — a temporary, amateur body. What stands out this time is that the JFTC found two design-consulting firms and 40 renovation contractors, 42 companies in total, in violation of the Antitrust Act (unreasonable restraint of trade), issuing cease-and-desist orders to 38 of them and a combined roughly ¥1.6 billion in surcharges to the contractors that won the work — spanning a wide area of 171 buildings across Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures. The JFTC publishing the names of the targeted condos on its website is an unusual step, giving the residents themselves, as the parties affected, a chance to find out. On the thread, comments mostly voiced frustration that bid-rigging results only in fines rather than criminal arrest, and pointed to the structural weakness of management unions that tend to leave everything to contractors. Note: several posts named specific companies allegedly involved in the collusion, but since it couldn’t be confirmed from the article whether they match the companies actually named in this case, those posts have been excluded here.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5channel (News Express+) thread “Bid-rigging in condo renovation contracts: 42 companies found in violation of Antitrust Act… the structure behind residents’ “increased burden” — FTC publishes names of 171 condos across Tokyo and 6 prefectures.”
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