Malicious landlords owe 1.7 trillion won in unpaid deposits... List to be disclosed this year

Malicious landlords increase by 101 in 6 months this year
Law on disclosure of list enacted... Disclosure possible within the year

It has been revealed that 334 malicious landlords who habitually failed to return tenants' jeonse deposits have embezzled nearly 1.7 trillion won in deposits. Their names are expected to be disclosed as early as this year.

The Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG), which operates the jeonse deposit return guarantee insurance, manages landlords who have had their deposits repaid by HUG three or more times and who are either unreachable or have not repaid any guarantee debt in the past year as focused management multi-home debtors (malicious landlords).

According to data submitted by HUG to Maeng Seong-gyu, a member of the National Assembly Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, the number of focused management multi-home debtors stood at 334 as of the end of June this year. This is an increase of 101 from 233 at the end of last year, within just six months.

The total amount of guarantee accidents reported to HUG due to malicious landlords failing to return jeonse deposits reached 1.6553 trillion won, of which HUG paid tenants a total of 1.4665 trillion won as subrogation payments.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

In the first half of this year, guarantee accidents involving malicious landlords occurred most frequently in multi-family housing. Guarantee accidents in multi-family housing accounted for 1,198 cases (valued at 214.7 billion won), representing 49% of all guarantee accidents involving malicious landlords (2,443 cases).

Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on the 28th, the amended Special Act on Private Rental Housing and the Housing and Urban Fund Act, which provide the legal basis for disclosing the list of malicious landlords, will take effect from the 29th.

The disclosure targets are landlords who have had two or more subrogation claims by HUG for returning jeonse deposits to tenants within the last three years (including one claim after the law’s enforcement) and whose amounts exceed 200 million won. Landlords whose rental business registration has been canceled for more than six months due to failure to return deposits on time and who still have unreturned deposits exceeding 100 million won are also included.

However, the list of malicious landlords will not be disclosed immediately upon the law’s enforcement. Landlords who failed to return deposits due to economic difficulties or other non-intentional reasons will be given an opportunity to explain, and it will take about two to three months for the Landlord Information Disclosure Deliberation Committee to make the final decision on disclosure.

If the committee decides to disclose the list after considering the explanations, the names will be published on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and HUG websites, as well as on the Ansim Jeonse app. The disclosure is expected to be possible within this year at the earliest.

Assemblyman Maeng stated, “In addition to preventing damage through the disclosure of malicious landlord lists, strong punitive measures must be established to ensure the effectiveness of subrogation claims against malicious landlords.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.