Three toilets, two baths and nowhere sensible to take a video call. In YOUTRUST’s former Tokyo office, the square footage looked more generous than the working space felt. The career-network company described staff taking online meetings in the corridor on busy days. Its next move, arranged with IPPO, involved finding room to grow and finding somebody else to take over what it was leaving behind. Even the spare toilet paper found a new owner.
That unglamorous handover gets close to the point of IPPO. The Japanese real estate company specializes in helping startups move offices, with particular attention to inuki: premises passed on with interiors or furniture still in place. One business has outgrown the room. Another could use it tomorrow. Paying to destroy the first company’s improvements can look peculiar when viewed from the second company’s chair.
The broker who disliked the usual answer
Founded in 2018, IPPO emerged from people already working in real estate. President Hideto Sekiguchi had previously run a brokerage. Co-founder and director Norifumi Osumi met him at an earlier property company, where Sekiguchi taught him the business. Osumi says their shared interest in entrepreneurship and better working environments led them to establish IPPO together.
Sekiguchi’s explanation is refreshingly blunt: “I did not want to become an ordinary real estate agent,” he says in a company interview, translated from Japanese. Watching entrepreneurs challenge established habits made accepting his own industry’s routines uncomfortable. The company’s mission now calls for redefining real estate business practices and creating new everyday standards.
The early friction was practical. In IPPO’s recruitment materials, Sekiguchi recalls startups struggling to win landlords’ understanding and being rejected during tenant screening. An attractive business idea did not automatically make a convincing rental application. Helping founders explain their businesses to property owners became part of the work. The obstacle arrived before anyone could argue over the carpet.
One room. Three different reasons to say yes.
In an interview with Lumii, Sekiguchi described a wasteful sequence among fast-growing clients: build an interior, move after roughly 18 months to three years, demolish it, then build again somewhere else. Hitte, IPPO’s office search and listing service, grew from the idea that the next company could inherit that work. Departing tenants could reduce reinstatement costs; incoming tenants could avoid some construction spending.
The website makes those opportunities visible. Its listings cover inuki and setup offices, while guides and relocation stories help customers understand what they are choosing. IPPO also supplies properties through its own information network. A search result starts the conversation; the transaction still needs a broker who understands the business behind the request.
Osumi describes a three-way match: the outgoing tenant, the incoming tenant and the building owner must agree. IPPO can look within its community for a successor, help arrange the transfer of fittings and deal with the owner. The economics depend on that coordination. A perfectly good interior has limited value if nobody suitable can take it at the right time.
That makes local knowledge more than a sales flourish. Knowing which founder needs extra desks is useful; knowing which tenant is about to release them is useful twice over. The editorial inference is straightforward: IPPO’s specialization can help it connect demand and supply inside the same startup community. Its advantage must be earned in those relationships, deal by deal.
The bill does not disappear. Parts of it can.
Hitte publishes a clear starting point for fees. Property listings are free, and incoming tenants can consult before signing without charge. At contract, the stated brokerage fee is up to one month’s rent, excluding applicable campaign variations. On the departure side, the published consulting charge is 20 percent of the reinstatement construction cost when the successor tenant contracts.
The distinction matters when reading the service’s zero-yen interior-cost messaging. An inherited fit-out may remove a large construction bill, but it does not make every expense in a relocation vanish. The page also advertises a possible two-to-four-month reduction in the moving process when construction can be skipped. These are conditional service claims, not the recorded average outcome of every customer.
IPPO’s other commercial route runs through venture investors. Its service page lists partners including ANOBAKA, Coral Capital, East Ventures and ANRI. A package for qualifying portfolio companies offers zero brokerage fees and help with the move, alongside introductions to interior and infrastructure providers. ANOBAKA’s accelerator materials also document IPPO office support. The connection is distribution: investors know companies whose next hiring plan may require a new address.
A December 2024 company account says more than 90 percent of customers were startups and describes supporting hundreds of companies annually. It also says clients could choose brokerage fees according to satisfaction. Those published descriptions help explain the emphasis on repeat relationships, though an individual customer still needs the terms of their own engagement.
The right office is sometimes somebody else’s model
YOUTRUST’s move is revealing because reuse did not dictate every choice. Its team wanted enough capacity to stay for around three years and intended to invest in an interior suited to hybrid work. IPPO helped with the outgoing office’s successor tenant while supporting the search for a larger new home. Reuse on departure and a more customized arrival could belong in the same decision.
Another published customer case, Pacific Meta, begins in a founder’s home. The team wanted a place that would support regular work and stronger shared routines. It chose a serviced office in Gotanda, valuing common areas, meeting facilities and included internet and utilities. After IPPO narrowed the options to two or three, the company says it decided on the day of the viewing; the process took less than a month.
That example also contains a useful habit to copy. Pacific Meta defined its area and office type in advance, reducing the temptation to keep searching indefinitely. Access, cost, size and shared facilities gave the decision a structure. An appealing photograph had to answer a brief.
Hitte’s planning materials make that preparation more tangible. Its move-in FAQ recommends beginning the search about a year before renewal and offers a simulator comparing conventional and inuki costs. The questions include location, floor area, deposits, fees and free-rent periods. The comparison invites a company to look beyond the monthly rent printed beside a listing. Osumi brings transaction experience to those conversations: his published professional biography describes work with more than 500 companies, including over 200 inuki moves. Those are his stated career figures, rather than a count of current IPPO customers, but they illustrate the practical expertise the consultancy is selling.
An appealing photograph had to answer a brief.
The lesson from Pacific Meta’s office search
IPPO therefore sits among conventional brokers, direct leases, ready-fitted offices and shared-workspace options. Those alternatives can also be part of its recommendation. A company that needs a very specific layout may prefer to build; a small team may gain more from shared meeting rooms. An inuki handover needs suitable space, workable timing and an owner willing to approve the arrangement. None of those follows automatically from a low construction budget.
The floor has a carbon footprint, too
There is an environmental consequence to keeping useful interiors. In May 2024, IPPO published work by environmental consultancy Wastebox estimating avoided emissions in two office handovers. One involved 381.2 tsubo, a Japanese floor-area unit, with modeled savings of 57,179 kilograms of CO2. The other, at 134.15 tsubo, produced an estimate of 19,024 kilograms.
The calculation compared defined disposal and materials-production processes. It excluded areas such as use and maintenance, with further assumptions about minor works and cleaning. The results support a narrower claim than a carbon-free move: avoiding certain removal and replacement activities avoids associated emissions. IPPO also announced a 1,000-tonne contribution target for its 2024 initiative; that announcement stated an ambition, not an achieved total.
The attraction is that the environmental argument follows the same physical action as the financial one. Leave a usable floor in place, and the next tenant need not pay for its replacement. Readers need no enthusiasm for sustainability slogans to understand the appeal of getting another working life from something already built.
Taking the introductions to Fukuoka
IPPO’s next test is geographical. It opened a Fukuoka branch in February 2025 and expanded into new premises in Daimyo from March 1, 2026. In its announcement, the company attributed the move to increased consultations and staffing needs, describing demand from local startups and businesses entering the city. A year of operating there had persuaded management to commit more space and people.
Its work is also extending into a different kind of existing building. In June 2026, IPPO announced renewed selection as a coordinator for Tokyo’s entrepreneur vacant-house utilization program. The consultation desk is intended to help put empty houses to work as offices. The shared idea is recognizable: find business use for property that already exists.
Inside the company, the published values translate as observe, execute and prove. Its 2025 kickoff report describes sales, marketing, administration and new-business teams reviewing results and setting goals around those ideas. Marketing manager Misa Tokunaga has described another concrete ambition: building recognition and systems so Sekiguchi and Osumi do not have to remain the people doing frontline sales.
The corporate overview lists 46 employees in May 2026, including 12 licensed real estate transaction specialists. For customers, the practical question is whether that organization can keep making good matches as it grows. Before commissioning the next meeting room, it may be worth asking who is about to leave one behind.