You can check what a home really sold or rented for on the government's Real Transaction Price Disclosure System (실거래가 공개시스템, rt.molit.go.kr). It lists reported sale prices from January 2006 and reported lease prices from June 2021, by contract date, and publishes them the next day. Compare the deposit you are asked to pay with the latest sale prices in the same building. The closer the deposit is to the sale price, the less room you have if the price falls.
If you would rather do this check in English, Seoulstart's price explorer lists a building's reported contracts one contract month at a time, for up to the last 12 completed months, with floor area and date.
What 실거래가 is, and why it beats a listing price
A real transaction price (실거래가) is the price a sale or lease was reported at after the deal was signed. A listing shows what a seller or landlord hopes to get. A reported price shows what the two sides agreed.
That makes it the better number for two decisions:
- Is the rent or deposit I am offered in line with what neighbours signed?
- Is the sale price high enough, compared with my jeonse deposit, to leave me room if prices fall? (More on this below.)
Treat it as a guide, not a guarantee. The site says its information has no legal effect and is for reference only.
How to search on rt.molit.go.kr
The site is in Korean. Use your browser's translate feature if you need it.
What it covers. Sale prices start in January 2006 and cover reported apartments, row and multi-household housing, detached and multi-family houses, officetels, land, commercial and office space, and factories and warehouses, plus apartment presale and occupancy rights (분양/입주권) signed from June 29, 2007. Lease prices (전월세) start in June 2021 for apartments, row and multi-household housing, detached and multi-family houses, and officetels. The site also holds date-stamp (확정일자) lease data from January 2011.
How to search the apartment page:
- Pick the property type tab, such as apartment, row and multi-household, detached, or officetel.
- Choose the province, then the city or district, then the neighbourhood.
- Choose the complex name.
- Choose the base year. The list runs from 2006 to the current year.
- Choose the address type: lot number or road name.
- Switch between sale (매매) and lease (전월세). For leases, the lease-type column (전월세구분) shows whether a contract is jeonse or monthly rent.
The results table shows the neighbourhood, base year, month, area, amount, and lease type.
Dates. Prices are counted by contract date, not report date. A July contract reported in August shows as July. This is why the site's numbers differ from MOLIT's monthly transaction-volume statistics, which count by report date.
Red rows. The table shows cancelled deals on a red background. Those were reported as cancelled under Article 3-2 of the Real Estate Transaction Reporting Act (부동산 거래신고 등에 관한 법률). A red row is a contract that did not complete, so ignore it when you work out what homes sell for.
Help and limits. The site's help line is 1533-2949. The site bans scraping and other automated tools that extract its data, so look things up by hand.
Why a recent deal can be missing
The data comes from reports, so it only shows what has been reported.
- Sales. The parties must report the real price within 30 days of signing the contract, to the district office with jurisdiction (Real Estate Transaction Reporting Act, Article 3).
- Housing leases. Both parties must report jointly within 30 days of signing, if the deposit is over ₩60 million or the monthly rent is over ₩300,000. If one side refuses, the other can report alone. A renewal that only extends the term, with no change in deposit or rent, is not covered. Seoul's 25 districts (구) are inside the reporting area.
- Changes and cancellations. A change to the deposit or rent, or a cancellation, must be reported within 30 days of becoming final. A cancelled sale must also be reported within 30 days.
- Small leases. MOLIT's FAQ says small leases are sometimes not reported, because the parties often see no link to the priority repayment right, and tells users to take care with the data.
- Renewals. The price in the system changes only when the new contract gets a date stamp (확정일자).
A false sale report can lead to a fine of up to 10% of the property's acquisition value.
So if you see only a few deals, or none for the last month, do not assume nothing sold. Look further back and at nearby buildings.
The easier way: Seoulstart's price explorer
Seoulstart Housing shows reported government data in English, so you can do the same check without the Korean site.
- Reported contracts for a building, one month at a time for up to the last 12 completed months, with floor area and date.
- Jeonse contracts only.
- Apartment sales only.
- Free rent pages for Seoul and for each district, such as Gangbuk-gu.
For a quick safety check on a specific offer, use the deposit safety tool, which checks a deposit against the building's prices. To compare lease types, try the jeonse vs wolse tool. For how jeonse works, read how jeonse works.
Check the jeonse ratio
The jeonse ratio (전세가율) is the jeonse deposit divided by the sale price of the same home.
Formula: deposit ÷ latest comparable sale price × 100.
Example (illustrative numbers, not a real home). Say a flat last sold for ₩400 million and the landlord asks for a ₩300 million jeonse deposit.
₩300 million ÷ ₩400 million = 0.75, so the ratio is 75%.
The higher the ratio, the less room there is if the home's price falls. At 75%, the home could fall by a quarter before its price is below your deposit. At 90%, it could fall by only a tenth. And the sale price is not the only claim on the home: a mortgage from a bank comes out of the same price. That is why the register check below matters.
MOLIT's own example sets the line for insurance. In February 2023 it said deposit-return guarantee insurance from HUG (Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation) would be limited to homes where the deposit is 90% or less of the home price, down from 100%. For a ₩300 million home, that means a deposit of ₩270 million or less (₩270 million ÷ ₩300 million = 90%). The rule applies to new leases from May 1, 2023. MOLIT said the aim is to stop empty-deposit (깡통전세) contracts. A deposit above 90% cannot be insured at all.
The 90% line is only the cut-off for insurance. A ratio below it does not make a deal safe.
Use real, current numbers
Seoulstart publishes medians of reported contracts each month. As of August 2026, the median apartment jeonse deposit in Seoul is ₩630m and the median apartment sale price is ₩873.5m.
Do not divide one by the other and call the result your ratio. The two medians do not come from the same homes. For your own check, find the latest comparable sale in the same building or complex, and use that.
To see a district, open its page, for example Gangbuk-gu, where the apartment jeonse median is ₩455m and the sale median is ₩700m. Then open apartment sales to find the building you are looking at.
Brokers also have duties. Under the Licensed Real Estate Agents Act (공인중개사법), a broker must tell a prospective tenant that they can ask to see the landlord's unpaid national and local taxes and the home's date-stamp records, and a broker who does not explain the property accurately can be fined up to ₩5 million. Ask your agent for these checks.
Public price (공시가격) and the guarantee arithmetic
The public price (공시가격) is a yearly price for apartments (공동주택가격). Under the Real Estate Price Disclosure Act, MOLIT works out each year what the price was on a reference date (January 1), and publishes it after the Central Real Estate Price Publication Committee reviews it. The public price is also a base for property tax and health insurance premiums.
You can look up an apartment's public price on the Real Estate Public Price Notice site (부동산 공시가격 알리미, realtyprice.kr). Its call centre is 1644-2828.
This matters because MOLIT said that guarantee screening would value a home by its real transaction price and public price first, and use an appraisal only if neither exists. The Korea Housing Finance Corporation (HF) is a separate state body. Its own General Jeonse Guarantee (일반전세지킴보증) shows the formula in practice. It sets the limit at 90% of the home price minus senior claims (senior mortgages plus earlier tenants' deposits). It values an apartment at 140% of MOLIT's public price when no market price applies. It does not count reference prices from sites such as KB AI prices.
HUG's own current rules were not checked for this guide. Treat the HF terms as an official example of the same kind of formula, not as HUG's rules.
Derived arithmetic (not an official figure). Combine the two numbers from HF's terms: public price × 140% × 90%.
Example: a public price of ₩300 million gives a value base of ₩420 million (₩300 million × 1.4). Ninety percent of that is ₩378 million (₩420 million × 0.9). So the most a guarantee could cover as deposit plus senior mortgages is ₩378 million, which is 126% of the public price. This is our own calculation from the two published numbers. It is not a rule that anyone published as "126%".
Check the property register
The price tells you what the home is worth. The register shows what is owed on it. Compare any senior mortgage plus your deposit with the home's sale price. If the two together come close to the price, there is little room.
Viewing one register online at the Supreme Court's online registry (인터넷등기소, iros.go.kr) costs ₩700. Issuing a printable certificate online costs ₩1,000 per copy. These are the fees in the rule in force from August 1, 2025. A fee increase has been discussed, so check the current price on the site.
For how to read the register and what else to collect, read the lease documents checklist.
Two more official tools:
- Safe Jeonse app (안심전세 앱). From HUG with MOLIT. A renter can see the landlord's tax arrears and the home's rights, such as senior claims and mortgages, and run a self-check after entering the senior mortgages and the deposit.
- Landlord information lookup. Since May 2025, a prospective tenant can see how many HUG-guaranteed homes the landlord holds, whether the landlord is barred from guarantees, and the number of subrogated-payment cases in the last 3 years, without the landlord's consent. You apply with a broker's confirmation at a HUG branch or in the app. The result comes within 7 days, and each person gets 3 lookups a month. These rules change, so confirm them in the app.
Red flags
- The deposit is close to or above 90% of the latest sale price.
- You cannot find any comparable sale in the building.
- Senior mortgages stack up on the register, so the claims ahead of you plus your deposit come close to the home's price.
- The landlord holds many guaranteed homes, or has had subrogated payments before.
- The landlord or agent will not let you see the register.
- Someone asks you to skip the date stamp. A tenant who has registered the move-in and has a date stamp gets priority repayment of the deposit (Housing Lease Protection Act, Article 3-2).
If any of these show up, slow down. Read how to avoid deposit scams and the deposit return guide before you sign. For typical rents by district, see rent in Seoul, and for sale prices see Seoul apartment prices.
This guide is general information, not investment or legal advice.