Tag: rent

It will be interesting to see if landlords do drop rents when these property taxes are frozen or just pocket the extra income:

The government is expected to freeze property tax for the entire homeowners including owners of one expensive home with an officially appraised value of over 1.1 billion won ($905,000) subject to the Comprehensive Real Estate Tax, according to government ministries, Sunday. The hefty Comprehensive Real Estate Tax is imposed for retaining expensive homes. 

The measure is part of the real estate market policy revisions pledged by President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, whose win by a razor-thin margin was underpinned in considerable part by public fury over the housing prices doubling under the Moon Jae-in administration due to two dozen botched government policies. 

Higher housing prices led to a tax spike for homeowners, almost all of whom passed the unexpected burden to tenants in the form of higher rent, threatening their stable living arrangements. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it will also be interesting to see what losing all this property tax revenue will do to the national budget.

GIs have been dealing with shady landlords for decades, but in my opinion things have actually improved though it appears foreign students are now a bigger target:

International students here are increasingly falling victim to real estate-related fraud.

In one case, a Vietnamese student, 28, didn’t get her room deposit of 5 million won back because her landlord said she didn’t pay any monthly rent. But she claimed she paid six months’ rent in a lump sum but didn’t receive a receipt.

“The real estate procedure is complicated for international students,” one Chinese international student, surnamed Jing, told Dong-A Ilbo. “And it is harder to understand the jargon when they speak in Korean.”

Foreign students, now numbering 120,000 here, often fall victim to the fraud.

The paper cites four types. The first is a makeshift contract. Instead of a standard template contract, the landlords arbitrarily draw up one that does not protect the rights of foreign tenants.

The second is the cash transaction.

The third is the imposition of repair costs on the tenants. In the second and third cases, the landlord tries to take advantage of the foreign students’ inability to speak Korean or lack of related knowledge.

The fourth is a conflict when a student sublets a room to another tenant without a contract, which a landlord can use as an excuse to eject the tenants.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.