Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Milwaukiedave]

The oral agreement was between you and the landlord. I would try to settle this directly with the landlord and keep the real estate agent out of it. If you offer the landlord something to save face, likely he/she will accept it if you sit down and negotiate directly with the landlord.

Someone mentioned finding a older Korean, that is a good idea. An older Korean is going to have a little more pull in terms of respect especially if you are getting jerked around by the real estate agent.

Generally a landlord has to get another tenant lined up to move in so they can pay back your deposit. It's possible they may have money tied up in investments and don't have amount to pay you back. If you can wait until they have someone lined up, that will help give you a little leverage.

We had a 2 year lease with our last landlord and then signed both of us signed a short letter extending the lease for six months. At no time did the real estate agent get involved. Then right before the extension was up, we decided to start looking for a house to buy, so we needed another few extra days since the place we were buying wasn't available exactly on the day our lease ended. The second time we amended the contract was verbally and was for about a week.

[Dysupes]

Since you've had a bunch of posts but no very clear answers, hopefully this'll help your friend. I've had a number of leases here in Korea and each time I had to break the lease early I was required to pay a real estate agent fee. For 2 officetel apartments of 17pyeong and 19pyeong, with key money of only 5,000,000W, I had to pay between 220,000W and 270,000W. This is the same fee your friend paid when they first signed the contract and it is a standard real estate fee for breaking the contract. Essentially they are paying for the real estate agent to find a new tenant. As they broke the contract they are responsible for paying the part of the agency fees that the landlord would be paying if they had completed the contract. Also, it is common in ALL cases that the landlord finds a new tenant before giving the key money back. Of course, if they aren't able to find someone by the agreed moving date then yes they always will give the tenant their deposit back but it's standard practice here to find the new tenant first.

While 600,000W sounds steep, it does depend on the price of the apartment on the market and the Budongsan's fee. So the main idea here is that this fee is not out of order in and of itself but that your friend should go in with a Korean friend and verify why it's so high (or maybe it's not high at all depending on the area and the officetel).