Renting to Foreign Tenants in Korea: What a Landlord Should Know

Who comes looking

Seoul Homes is a listing site that runs in 10 languages. On 8 October 2026, listings had received 95 inquiries in the previous 30 days, and 77 of them (81%) were written in a language other than Korean. Not everyone who writes in another language is a foreigner, but this is demand that Korean-only property sites rarely reach.

On the same day the site had 198 residential rental listings.

• Officetels are the largest group, with 108 listings and a median monthly rent of ₩1.95 million.
• Villas have 33 listings (median ₩5.2 million), apartments 24 (₩5.5 million) and detached houses 9 (₩6.0 million).
• 74 listings accept short-term leases, and 12 accept lump-sum prepayment of several months' rent.

These are asking rents on Seoul Homes listings, not market averages.

What tenants bring up first

We counted what comes up in the 309 listing inquiries of the last 90 days.

• How long they will stay is mentioned most, in 86 inquiries (28%). Saying in the listing which lease lengths you accept saves a round of messages.
• 58 (19%) ask whether they can view the home, and 55 (18%) ask whether it is still available.
• 28 (9%) say they are students, 25 (8%) ask about the deposit, and 24 (8%) mention a visa or an Alien Registration Card.

These are counts of words in the message text, so treat them as rough.

What is the same as with a Korean tenant

• Housing Lease Protection Act (주택임대차보호법). It applies whatever the tenant's nationality. The rules on lease term, renewal and return of the deposit are the same, so there is no reason to write a different contract for a foreign tenant.
• Lease reporting (주택 임대차 계약 신고). A housing lease with a deposit over ₩60 million or a monthly rent over ₩300,000 must be reported within 30 days of signing. It covers the whole capital area, the metropolitan cities, Sejong, Jeju City and the cities (시) of each province, and fines apply to contracts signed from 1 June 2025. You can report at the community service center (주민센터) or online through the Real Estate Transaction Management System (RTMS), and either the landlord or the tenant can file with the contract attached. Nothing changes when the tenant is a foreigner.
• Rental income tax. The duty to report rental income is the same whoever the tenant is. See the rental income tax filing guide.

What is different

Checking identity and length of stay

Check the passport and the Alien Registration Card (외국인등록증) together before signing. The card shows the visa status and the date the permitted stay ends, so see whether the lease fits inside it. If the stay ends first, ask about plans to extend and, if needed, match the lease term to it. A tenant who has not arrived yet, or has not registered yet, can be checked with a passport and visa plus a certificate of employment or enrollment.

A change-of-residence report in place of 전입신고

A foreigner does not file the resident move-in report (전입신고). They report the change of residence (체류지 변경신고) at the community service center or the immigration office within 15 days of moving. Article 88-2 of the Immigration Act says alien registration and the change-of-residence report stand in for resident registration and the move-in report, and the Supreme Court has recognised a foreign tenant who made the report as protected against third parties (대항력) (Supreme Court, 13 October 2016, 2014다218030, 218047). A fixed date (확정일자) can be obtained the same way as for a Korean tenant. The landlord has nothing extra to do, but it helps to know that the tenant will take the lease contract to make this report.

Deposit and rent

Many countries have no custom of handing over a large deposit, so foreign tenants tend to prefer a lower deposit and a higher monthly rent. Taking several months' rent in advance in place of a large deposit (known as 깔세) has long been used in expat rentals. On Seoul Homes you can mark a listing as accepting this kind of lump-sum prepayment. When the deposit is wired from abroad it can take a few days to arrive, so leave room before the balance date.

Contract and language

Use the standard Korean contract, and give a one-page English summary of the key terms (deposit, rent, what the maintenance fee includes, lease term, early termination, restoring the home) to cut misunderstandings. Put a line in the summary saying the Korean contract prevails.

Short-term leases

A short period does not by itself make an arrangement a lease. What separates leasing from lodging is how it is run, not what the contract is called. Letting a room by the day to the general public with lodging services such as linen changes and cleaning can be treated as a lodging business, and running one without registering is punishable under the Public Health Control Act. Registering an officetel as lodging is often not possible. The baseline is a lease contract by the month, with the tenant using the home independently. If in doubt, ask the district office first.

How to find a tenant

• List it yourself. Sign up as a landlord on Seoul Homes and you can list your home yourself with no business registration. The listing appears in the same search results as realtors' listings, and inquiries come only through a form, so your contact details are not shown. It appears on the English site as soon as it is published, but a title and description written only in Korean show in Korean, so add English with the AI translate button on the listing form. On the other language sites (Japanese, Chinese and so on) a listing appears only once it has a title and description in that language.
• Hand it to a realtor. If you would rather not handle inquiries yourself, you can approve a posting request from an interested realtor, who then also looks for a tenant for the same home.

If you are weighing registration as a rental business, see the pros and cons of rental business registration.

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This article is general information and does not replace legal or tax advice. Check any specific contract with a licensed realtor, a lawyer or a tax accountant.