Studios tenants cannot also avoid ‘tin can jeonse’

As of July, the number of cases where owners of studios fail to return a jeonse deposit to tenants exceeded last year’s number. The damages of a so-called “tin can jeonse” have expanded to studios from multi-household residencies.

Rep. Kim Doo-kwan of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the Land Infrastructure and Transport committee of the National Assembly, received data from the Housing Finance Corporation (HUG) on Monday and found that the number of such studio jeonse deposit incidents was 291. The amount of damage was about 57 billion won, which exceeded last year’s 56.6 billion won with 303 cases. If this trend persists, the incidents and damage are projected to double last year's.

The growth of the case number regarding studios shows a steep increase compared to apartments and multi-household residencies. Although the figure for the first seven months of the year already exceeded last year in terms of the amount of damage caused by studio jeonse deposit incidents, the amount of damage caused by multi-household residency deposit incidents was 247.4 billion won, 71.3 percent of last year’s 346.9 billion won. During the same period, the damage caused by apartment jeonse deposit incidents was 107.7 billion won, 72 percent of last year’s 149.6 billion won.

The number of studio jeonse deposit incidents surged because the demand rushed to studios with less strict regulation than houses when the housing market was overheated. Before January, when non-house mortgage loans weren’t applied DSR of 40 percent, people could buy studios by taking out loans of 70 percent of the sale price. “Studios are vulnerable to such incidents because jeonse prices are high compared to sales prices,” Rep. Kim said. “It is more concerning because when housing prices drop, the number of such cases could increase further.”


Hye-Ryung Choi herstory@donga.com