Korea rental-deposit contract guide: Deokbang Yeonguso's book

A book I read before signing a jeonse or monthly-rental deposit contract

Today, I’m going to talk about a book on precious jeonse and monthly-rental deposits!

The book I read today about jeonse and monthly-rental deposits is Protect Your Jeonse and Monthly Rent Deposit, the first book from Deokbang Yeonguso, a YouTube channel with 200,000 subscribers.

The author, Deokbang Yeonguso, is a YouTuber who began running the channel to share real-estate knowledge. The author majored in real estate and has worked in the field as a licensed real-estate agent for nearly 10 years. As more people have questions about jeonse and monthly-rental fraud, which have become social issues these days, the channel has received a very warm response, with more than 4 million views.

This book is written mainly around jeonse, but it says it is perfectly fine to read it while thinking of “jeonse” as “monthly rent.” That is because you should not feel safe simply because it is a monthly rental when it comes to deposit-related fraud, so I think it is worth keeping that in mind as you read.

Contents, from recognizing a case to a prevention guide

Here is the table of contents for Deokbang Yeonguso’s Protect Your Jeonse and Monthly Rent Deposit. It was carefully organized, from recognizing that something is happening, to the moment you encounter fraud, the steps you need to take to resolve it, and a prevention guide! I’m going to talk about a few parts that stood out to me!

When should you establish tenant protection?

First, tenant protection is something you absolutely must understand when signing for a home. Personally, I hope you complete procedures such as move-in registration and obtaining a fixed date on the very day you move. You can do it online these days, too, so I recommend getting it done quickly.

To establish tenant protection, three things are important: move-in registration, occupancy, and a fixed date. There is a reason I said to do them quickly on the same day. Even if you receive the move-in registration and fixed date on the day you move, the protection and preferential repayment right they provide only take effect from midnight on the following day. The issue here is when a mortgage is created on the building.

That is because a mortgage takes effect immediately. As in the example in Protect Your Jeonse and Monthly Rent Deposit, if a mortgage is created in the meantime, the way you handle filings such as move-in registration can make matters concerning priority very complicated. The book covers this in great detail as well, so please read it carefully.

Check brokerage assistants and illegal brokers, too

And from my own experience, when you are out viewing homes, there are staff members who speak rather ambiguously even though they are not licensed real-estate agents, right? It turns out that, more often than you might think, they are brokerage assistants rather than licensed agents.

This book even has a chapter on identifying illegal brokers, so please be sure to refer to it!

What to check in the contract

As you can see, Protect Your Jeonse and Monthly Rent Deposit covers everything in detail, from recognizing the situation to items you must check when signing a contract, including preliminary-contract text messages and special clauses unfavorable to tenants. I thought it would be a very good book to read at least once if you are looking for a jeonse or monthly rental. And when people around me talk about problems with real-estate contracts, if something feels off when signing? Personally, I recommend not signing, even if you really regret letting that home go.

Jeonse and monthly-rental fraud really are social problems that are causing many people pain, and it seems that various support systems and measures are being introduced. But there are supposedly very few systems that can provide practical help because of this and that restriction, and victims continue to emerge. Honestly, when someone is determined to commit fraud, I wonder whether ordinary people can prevent it. There are also quite a lot of cases where victims looked into things as thoroughly as they possibly could and were still harmed.

Amid these circumstances, this book clearly organizes the points to be careful about and the things worth checking before looking for a jeonse or monthly rental, making it easy to check everything at once. If you are looking for a jeonse or monthly rental, please do read it!