"Lost 10 billion won"... The shadow of foreign tenant fraud

Recently, in Gwanak-gu, Seoul, an incident occurred where a landlord of Chinese nationality fled to their home country without returning a jeonse deposit of around 10 billion won.

A licensed real estate agent near Daehak-dong in Gwanak-gu stated, "Many Chinese landlords built buildings with loans during the boom period," and "There have also been numerous cases of them committing jeonse fraud and leaving the country afterward."

Such damage from jeonse fraud is unlikely to be recovered. For foreigners, it is difficult to verify personal information and pursue debt collection, and investigations are also delayed.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Korea Housing & Urban Guarantee Corporation, there have been 52 jeonse guarantee incidents caused by foreign landlords from 2021 to August 2023, of which 40%, or 21 cases, involved Chinese nationals.

Mr. Lee, who resides in Sillim-dong, said, "Honestly, I feel uncomfortable if the landlord is a foreigner."

In August 2023, the government implemented an amendment requiring the appointment of a entrusted manager and the reporting of personal information for foreign real estate transactions. However, merely reporting personal information has limitations in fundamentally solving the problem.

Professor Kwon Dae-jung from Sogang University suggested that, like Japan, foreign investment should be strictly regulated or at least tax regulations such as acquisition tax and capital gains tax should be strengthened.

Meanwhile, issues of fairness in real estate regulations between foreigners and domestic residents are also consistently raised.

Loan regulations such as LTV and DSR apply to domestic residents, but foreigners can avoid these by using their own domestic financial institutions, leading to criticism of 'reverse discrimination.'

While the free investment environment for foreigners can be a positive signal for the Korean economy, there are also many hidden blind spots behind it. It is time to find the right balance between regulation and protection.

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If a foreigner owns the building, you should never enter...

They say they're just going to run off with it... Oh, come on...ㅡ,.ㅡ;;;