NOT A HOTEL Inc. changed its corporate name to NOTA Inc. effective October 2, 2026, and at a press event on October 5 announced that it would expand into mobility (NOT A GARAGE), housing (NOT A HOUSE) and urban development (NOT A CITY). Its core vacation-home business counts each villa as 360 nights a year and sells it as freehold land-and-building ownership in shares starting at 10 nights a year (a 1/36 share); on days the owners do not use, the villa is rented out as a hotel. According to the company, the business now spans 10 locations, 1,357 owners and cumulative contract value of roughly ¥94 billion. This article converts the share prices confirmed on the official website and in press releases into an “acquisition cost per night” and sets them against the estimated settled ADR of the towns where the properties are located. It also reads how the money flows from the company’s settlement-rules document, and contrasts the model with membership-type resorts on four axes: ownership, resale, inheritance and depreciation.

What Had Accumulated by the Name Change — ¥94bn in Contracts and 1,357 Owners

First, the announced figures in chronological order. When the company unveiled its DAO concept in November 2023, it had 7 locations sold or opened, 337 owners and cumulative sales of ¥11.9bn. When it announced ¥10.5bn in debt financing in December 2024 (as of end-November 2024), it had 9 locations, 659 owners and cumulative contract value of ¥28.4bn. At the Series C announcement in February 2026 (as of end-January 2026), it still had 9 locations but over 1,100 owners and cumulative contract value of about ¥65bn. And at the October 5, 2026 press event, it reported 10 locations, 1,357 owners and cumulative contract value of about ¥94bn.

What stands out in this progression is that contract value per owner keeps rising: from about ¥35M (¥11.9bn ÷ 337) to about ¥43M (¥28.4bn ÷ 659), about ¥59M (¥65bn ÷ 1,100) and about ¥69M (¥94bn ÷ 1,357). Contract value is growing faster than the owner count. In the roughly nine months from end-January to October 2026, contract value rose by ¥29bn while owners increased by 257, which works out to more than ¥110M per new owner for that period alone. This suggests that, on top of owners entering at the 10-nights-a-year minimum, buyers of 30-night shares and whole villas are pulling the average up.

The name change itself took effect on October 2, 2026, and the press event was held on October 5. Under NOTA sit NOT A HOTEL (vacation homes), NOT A HOUSE (housing; CEO Mai Shin), NOT A GARAGE (mobility; CEO Daisou Eto) and NOT A CITY (urban development, established 2025; CEO Midori Omori). Picking out just the numbers from the new businesses announced that day: NOT A HOUSE’s housing product “POD” starts at ¥69.8M per unit, and POD owners get an option to stay 3 nights a year at NOT A HOTEL locations nationwide for ¥16,500 a month. NOT A GARAGE CLUB is a membership with a ¥15.9M initial fee, ¥198,000 per month and a 5-year term, giving access to helicopters, cruisers and cars subject to availability; its first 20 slots were reported as fully subscribed. “NIGO JET,” a Gulfstream G500 designed by NIGO, is scheduled to enter service in December 2027 and is sold as a share with an 8-year ownership period. The design honed in vacation homes — turning the right to stay into ownership — is being extended to housing and mobility.

One Villa = 360 Nights Divided by 36 — The Share Unit and an 8.4% Bulk Discount

The share design is spelled out on the “How to Buy” page of the official website. A whole-villa purchase comes with “available days: 360 per year” and bookings up to 12 months ahead; a shared purchase starts at “10 days per year,” with bookings up to 10 months ahead for 10+ nights and up to 12 months ahead for 30+ nights. Since one villa counts as 360 nights a year, 10 nights a year is 1/36 and 30 nights a year is 1/12. Owners can use their nights at any location nationwide, and the site also notes that, because it is ownership, the share can be sold and inherited.

The published figures for Minakami “TOJI” illustrate the price ladder well. A May 2025 press report (quoting the company) put 10 nights a year at ¥28.91M (assuming 50 years), 30 nights a year at ¥79.48M and a whole villa (360 nights/yr) at ¥953.7M. Thirty-six 10-night shares would total ¥1,040.76M, so the whole-villa price is 8.4% cheaper. Thirty nights is also 8.4% cheaper than three 10-night shares (¥86.73M), so the bulk discount lines up neatly. For a whole-villa buyer, the price appears to reflect the savings on the selling cost of gathering 36 owners and the effort of fractional management.

Next, how the money flows after purchase. “About Settlement Rules and Income Reports,” a document the company publishes for owners, divides contracts into three types: lease, loan-for-use, and associate owner. Under a lease contract, NOT A HOTEL pays rent according to the owner’s nights (half of the annual rent every six months); the owner pays a self-use fee only for the nights they actually use, at the “per-night rate (rental fee)” stated in the contract, and this is offset against rent every six months. Under a loan-for-use contract there is no rent; the owner deposits a “monthly management fee (deposit)” each month, stays are charged against it, and any balance is refunded at fiscal year-end. Associate-owner contracts deposit a membership fee, with refundability depending on the contract.

The document’s list by contract type shows AOSHIMA, NASU, FUKUOKA, ISHIGAKI, MINAKAMI and Kitakaruizawa’s early houses (BASE and IRORI) on lease contracts, while SETOUCHI, TOKYO, RUSUTSU, MIURA, YUGAWARA and Kitakaruizawa’s MASU, IRORI 2.0, NATURE WITHIN and BASE L6–8 are on loan-for-use contracts. In other words, locations launched from 2025 onward are largely loan-for-use: owners receive no rental income, and in exchange the fixed management-fee burden has been replaced by “charging for what you use.” The document’s loan-for-use example is Kitakaruizawa “MASU”: the per-night rate is ¥105,600 in high season and ¥52,800 in standard season; an owner of 30 nights deposits ¥2,217,600 a year (¥184,800 a month), and in a year in which they use 6 high-season and 10 standard nights, ¥1,056,000 is refunded. Separately, land rent (depending on the house) is charged monthly, fire and earthquake insurance premiums are settled every half-year, and fixed-asset tax is debited once a year (at the October settlement, in proportion to the share); real-estate acquisition tax is advised house by house.

The 10 Locations and Their Published Prices — Alongside Each Town’s Estimated Settled ADR

Each location’s page on the official website gives its address down to the lot number. The Nasu location is in Sabara, Otawara City, Tochigi; Kitakaruizawa is in Omae, Tsumagoi Village, Agatsuma District, Gunma; Aoshima is in Aoshima 2-chome, Miyazaki City; Fukuoka is in Omiya, Chuo Ward, Fukuoka City; Setouchi is on Sagishima island in Mihara City, Hiroshima; and Yugawara is in Miyakami, Yugawara Town, Ashigarashimo District, Kanagawa (Oku-Yugawara). In this article, we use the estimated settled ADR of each host municipality (12-month average, October 2025–September 2026) as the benchmark. For Nasu, Otawara City’s ADR is only a reference value based on 8–9 properties, so we also show neighboring Nasu Town (49–54 properties).

Published prices were checked on the official website as of October 15, 2026. Products with prices shown as on sale are Kitakaruizawa’s BASE L (from ¥31.2M), IRORI 2.0 (from ¥70.92M; opening scheduled for November 2027) and NATURE WITHIN (from ¥91.77M; waitlist), Oku-Yugawara’s four ONSEN SUITE rooms (FRAME from ¥34.52M, RIVER from ¥38.48M, POOL from ¥46.61M, PENTHOUSE from ¥99.96M), and YUAMI, also at Yugawara (from ¥265.3M). YUAMI was announced as “a villa you can own outright” and has no share-unit pricing, so it is excluded from the per-night conversion. Miura’s CLUB SUITE (capacity 4) is shown on the official website at ¥29.04M (tax-included) for 10 nights a year — ¥290,000 per night over 10 years and ¥145,000 over 20 years, or 18.0x Miura City’s estimated settled ADR of ¥16,159 (reference value, 4–5 properties) (9.0x as a two-guest room), and 9.0x over 20 years (4.5x). Aoshima, Nasu, Fukuoka, Ishigaki, Minakami and Setouchi are sold out, and the official website notes that “NOT A HOTEL 2nd handles the buying and selling of opened properties.”

The pipeline ahead: at the Oku-Yugawara announcement in February 2026, the company said it had “opened 9 locations since 2020, and including ongoing projects such as Yugawara, there will be 17.” Locations named on the official website and at the press event include TOKYO (directed by NIGO) on Tokyo Bay in Futtsu City, Chiba; Rusutsu; Yakushima (Ateliers Jean Nouvel); the Kinki coast (Tadao Ando); Okinawa (Herzog & de Meuron); “HERITAGE” at To-ji in Kyoto; and “vertex” in Okinawa. At Kitakaruizawa, according to the official website, a KIDS PARK is scheduled to open in early 2028.

Acquisition Cost per Night — ¥31.2M for 10 Nights/Yr Is ¥312,000 over 10 Years, ¥156,000 over 20

This is the core of the analysis. Dividing the share price by “nights owned per year × assumed holding years” gives the cost of the right to stay per night. Because exit value is set to zero, the actual burden is lighter to the extent the share can be resold. Calculating for the seven products on sale (three at Kitakaruizawa, four at Oku-Yugawara) plus Minakami “TOJI” — eight products in total — gives ¥289,000–¥1,000,000 per night over 10 years and ¥145,000–¥500,000 per night over 20 years. The most accessible are TOJI and BASE L, which fall to around ¥150,000 per night with 20 years of use. PENTHOUSE and NATURE WITHIN, on the other hand, remain at ¥460,000–¥500,000 per night even over 20 years.

Set against the towns’ estimated settled ADR, these acquisition costs are an order of magnitude higher. Kitakaruizawa BASE L’s ¥312,000 (10-year holding) is 22.6x Tsumagoi Village’s ADR of ¥13,800; TOJI’s ¥289,000 is 15.9x Minakami Town’s ¥18,200; and Oku-Yugawara FRAME’s ¥345,000 is 16.8x Yugawara Town’s ¥20,500. But the comparison is not like for like: the town ADR is a two-guest room rate, while the villas are let whole with a capacity of eight. Treating capacity ÷ 2 as the room count, BASE L becomes ¥78,000 per room-equivalent (5.7x), TOJI ¥72,000 (4.0x) and FRAME (capacity 3) ¥230,000 (11.2x). Over 20 years these shrink to 2.8x, 2.0x and 5.6x respectively. Note, as a caveat on capacity differences, that suites with smaller capacity (FRAME, POOL) show higher converted multiples, while eight-guest villas show lower ones.

A more appropriate benchmark than the town ADR is probably the price at which the location itself sells as a hotel. According to MetroEngines Research data, the listed price of the Kitakaruizawa location (all-plan average, tax-included, two guests, whole villa per night) was ¥253,300 in June 2026 (24 days observed), and the Fukuoka location was ¥176,300 (30 days observed). BASE L’s acquisition cost per night is 1.23x this listed price over 10 years and 0.62x over 20 years; IRORI 2.0 is 2.8x and 1.4x, and NATURE WITHIN 3.6x and 1.8x. In other words, for a BASE L-class share held for 20 years, the “cost of the right to stay” falls below the location’s own hotel rate, with exit value as ownership on top. However, under a loan-for-use contract each owner stay incurs the per-night rate (in the MASU example, ¥105,600 high season / ¥52,800 standard), so the total burden of an actual night’s stay is the acquisition cost plus the self-use fee — a point not to be overlooked.

The resale record published by the company is also a reference for exit value. The marketplace run by NOT A HOTEL 2nd shows 30 completed deals totaling ¥1.06bn as of end-November 2025, with sale prices up an average of +33% and a maximum of 2.1x versus purchase price. Resale is possible from the fourth year after purchase (a three-year holding restriction), with both buyback and brokerage available. Whether an average of +33% will continue is another matter, but the table above, calculated with zero exit value, can be regarded as the conservative case.

How much exit value one assumes changes the effective per-night burden considerably. For BASE L (10 nights/yr, ¥31.2M), we lay out (acquisition cost − recovery) ÷ (10 nights × holding years) on two axes: holding period (10, 15, 20 years) and recovery rate on resale (0%, 25%, 50%, 75% of acquisition cost). Only the 0%-recovery, 10-year case (¥312,000/night) exceeds the Kitakaruizawa location’s listed price of ¥253,300; at 15 years with 75% recovery it falls to ¥52,000/night. Because the average +33% resale gain rests on only 30 completed deals, this table keeps recovery rates below 100%.

Funding — Three Layers: Pre-Completion Sales, Regional-Bank Syndicated Loans and Capital Alliances

So where does the money to build these villas come from? Lining up the announced rounds: ¥850M in a seed round in September 2021; ¥1.96bn in Series A in October 2022 (cumulative ¥4.11bn); ¥10.5bn in debt financing in December 2024 (cumulative about ¥22.3bn); about ¥10.1bn in February 2026, combining ¥2.598bn in Series C with ¥7.5bn in debt from 18 financial institutions (cumulative ¥33.2bn including executed loans and commitment lines); and a total of ¥16.5bn on August 6, 2026. The August raise included capital alliances with Toyota Invention Partners (TIP), Toyota’s strategic investment company, and the G-Lion Group, and the company said it was preparing a partner loan for buyers with SBI Group. On March 31, 2026, SBI Shinsei Bank joined a syndicated loan arranged by Gunma Bank to fund construction of four “IRORI 2.0” villas at Kitakaruizawa (scheduled to open November 2027).

Seen from the developer’s side, the money flows in three layers. The first is pre-completion share sales: as with IRORI 2.0, contracts in units from ¥31.2M for 10 nights accumulate more than a year before opening. The second is property-level project finance, which in the Kitakaruizawa case takes the form of a regional bank arranging and other banks participating. The third is company-level equity and debt, with VCs, operating companies and financial institutions coming in. Whereas the membership-type Resorttrust recovers project costs before opening by selling memberships after construction starts, with a liability structure of ¥257.5bn in advances received and deposits against ¥6.1bn in borrowings, NOTA actively uses borrowings and equity on top of pre-completion sales, growing its locations to 9 in four years and 10 in six. Against cumulative contract value of ¥94bn, cumulative announced funding is around ¥50bn — ¥33.2bn as of end-January 2026 (including credit lines) plus ¥16.5bn in August — so the structure in which sales exceed funding is shared with the membership model.

How It Differs from Membership Resorts — Ownership, Resale, Inheritance and Depreciation

Finally, we compare fractional ownership and membership models on four axes. As set out in our previous article, membership sales consist of a deposit (10–20%), a registration fee (35–40%) and a real-estate portion (45–50%); the registration fee is non-refundable, the deposit bears no interest, and the right of use is at the center. A NOTA share is ownership of the land and building itself; the company describes it as “an asset that can be depreciated and inherited,” and it can be sold on the NOT A HOTEL 2nd marketplace from the fourth year.

Comparing the two on per-night burden: the membership-model burden we estimated in the previous article was ¥77,400 per night (one room, two guests) for a 20-year holding, 8 nights a year and zero exit value. NOTA’s BASE L is ¥156,000 on the same zero-exit, 20-year basis, but it is a whole villa for eight, so the two-guest-room equivalent is ¥39,000. Whereas the membership model is a product for “buying annual usage rights over the long term,” fractional ownership is a product for “buying 1/36 of a property and staying in it,” and the share that can be recovered at exit determines the effective per-night burden. Taking the average +33% resale gain at face value, the effective burden over 20 years would fall well below cost, but this article does not go that far and shows cost only.

Implications for Hotel Operators and Investors

First, the fact that products whose “cost of the right to stay” exceeds ten times the local hotel rate keep selling out in resort towns shows that lodging prices are not determined by location ADR alone. A 30-night unit on Sagishima in Mihara City (ADR ¥5,700) sold for ¥389,037,000, and the Nasu location in Otawara City (¥5,800) is sold out, because the architect’s name, the brand and a network of mutually usable locations are creating the price. Even where the town ADR is low, there is room to attract high-rate lodging demand depending on product design. How closely lodging rates and land prices move together in resort areas is also discussed in our analysis of the rate and land-price gap between Karuizawa and Miyota.

Second, the shift from lease to loan-for-use contracts works to stabilize the developer’s cash flow. With no obligation to pay rent, and with owners’ monthly management fees held on deposit and drawn down as they stay, revenue from hotel operations is easier to separate from owners’ usage. For owners, the clarity of paying only for what they use remains. That newer locations are increasingly standardized on this contract is evidence that the company continues to refine its model.

Third, from the perspective of existing hotel operators, listed prices of ¥253,300 at the Kitakaruizawa location and ¥176,300 at the Fukuoka location mean that high-rate supply is being added at the very top of each area. At more than ten times Tsumagoi Village’s ADR of ¥13,800 and Chuo Ward, Fukuoka’s ¥16,100, these properties are less direct competitors than a means of surfacing demand at a new price tier. For operators targeting the upper tier in the same areas, this offers a reference for building products aimed at that demand.

Fourth, for investors, the depth of the resale market underpins new sales. At 30 deals and ¥1.06bn it is still small, but the very fact that a track record of +33% on average and up to 2.1x is published gives grounds to read the per-night acquisition cost calculated with zero exit value as a conservative floor. Against cumulative contract value of ¥94bn, cumulative announced funding is around ¥50bn (¥33.2bn at end-January 2026 + ¥16.5bn in August); this sales-first funding structure resembles the membership model, and the expansion into housing (POD) and mobility (NOT A GARAGE) follows the same “turn it into ownership” design.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How is 10 nights a year equal to 1/36?

Each villa is sold as a product usable 360 days a year, so a 10-nights-a-year share is 360 ÷ 10 = 1/36. Thirty nights a year is 1/12. The official “How to Buy” page states that a whole-villa purchase gives 360 days a year and a shared purchase starts at 10 days a year.

Q. When can a share be sold?

From the fourth year after purchase (a three-year holding restriction), on the marketplace operated by NOT A HOTEL 2nd. Both buyback and brokerage are available; as of end-November 2025, 30 deals totaling ¥1.06bn had been completed, with sale prices up an average of +33% versus purchase price.

Q. How much are the management fees?

They vary by location and house. The published figure is ¥554,400 per month for Setouchi (1 unit, 30 nights/yr; press report as of May 2025). Under loan-for-use contracts, this monthly management fee is held as a deposit, stays are charged against it at the per-night rate, and the balance is refunded at fiscal year-end. Separately, land rent (depending on the house) is charged monthly, fire and earthquake insurance premiums are settled every half-year, and fixed-asset tax is allocated once a year in proportion to the share.