Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hostness]

I'm pretty glad I found this thread. When I got to Korea I didn't really think about real estate fees and just forked over whatever they wanted because I just needed a place to stay badly. But my 1 year lease is up and I'd like to stay at my officetel but the real estate lady wants me to sign a new contract.

1) Is it normal for the real estate lady to collect ANOTHER fee for extending my contract? She was telling me I could only extend it for another year, not a 3,6,9-month thing which I would have preferred.

2) Can anyone update real estate fees on officetels? I looked over my contract I signed last year and it has that exact calculation above: 5mil + (850k monthly * 100) x 0.9%, which is just over 800,000. That's what it says on my contract, but I remember she only collected 500,000 at the time (my memory is fuzzy).


My instincts tell me I got ripped off because it's just weird to be forking over 500,000 won in FEES for a place that I'll be staying at for just a year, which is nearly 60% of one month's rent. It'd be even more weird to fork over the same high amount to "extend" my contract, as there's 0 work to be done by the real estate lady but signing a few more papers (she doesn't have to take care of any of the deposits or tenant / lessor or anything).

[sundizz]

I just (as in 20 minutes ago) signed a place near Seodontang (near Suwon) and for an officetel with 5 million key, 450 monthly, they charged me 300k for it. As the real estate lady is the mother of one of my students she said normally for officetels they would of charged 450k, but she gave me the a good rate.