Over 1,000 landlords across the country have repeatedly failed to return the deposits on their homes to tenants, with the arrears accumulated to 1.9 trillion won ($1.3 billion) across the country, government data showed Thursday.
A total of 1,128 individuals and 49 firms have failed to return the deposits to their tenants on at least two occasions in the past three years, according to the HUG Ansim Jeonse Portal run by the state-run Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corp.
The government has been releasing the information of such landlords -- whose total due deposits exceed 200 million won -- since Dec. 27 of 2023, to prevent housing fraud.
The rent deposits here are ones from "jeonse" rents, a form of housing contract that involves renting a property to tenants in exchange for a lump-sum deposit but no monthly fee. The landlord takes profits from using the deposit money for various means, usually to collect interest or dividends from investment.
As such, jeonse deposits are usually very high, averaging 66.5 percent of the building or unit's price, according to the Korea Real Estate Board. This means failing to get one’s deposit back causes serious issues for the tenant.
Those accused of habitually failing to return deposits have their name, age, address, the size of the deposit they failed to return and for how long put up on a state-run website.
One 51-year-old in Ulsan surnamed Kim owed a total of 86.2 billion won to his or her tenants in deposits. This person was involved in 209 requests for the order of asset seizure.
Some 23.2 percent of these landlords were in their 50s, followed by 21.8 percent in their 30s, 18.9 percent in their 40s, and 17.1 percent in their 60s. The average age of these "malicious" landlords was 47. They averaged 1.61 billion won in arrears.
The youngest was a 19-year-old living in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, who recently refused to return a 570 million won deposit for over a year. The oldest on the list was a 85-year-old living in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, who did not pay back a 360 million won deposit.
A total of 63 landlords were in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, and 53 were in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, the two regions hit hardest by the recent wave of rental fraud.
According to an August data from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, 916 cases of rental fraud occurred in Gangseo-gu to total 188.9 billion won in damage, the most out of any district in the city.
The data also showed that more than half of the 4,485 victims were in their 30s (2,373), while 1,062 were in their 20s and 706 in their 40s.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
