Protecting a ₩300M jeonse deposit costs ₩880 a day — how an insurance the riskiest homes cannot buy becomes a screening tool before you sign

A ₩300M deposit is a family's entire savings, left in someone else's house for two years. The price of a device that protects all of it is, for a well-positioned apartment, ₩880 a day. The jeonse deposit return guarantee is insurance under which a public institution pays your deposit if the landlord will not. But it has one odd feature: the riskier the home, the less able you are to buy it even if you want to. And that very feature turns it into a tool for screening a home before you sign.

In the jeonse-fraud episode we saw that the state's minimum protection is benchmarked at one-third of the deposit. The device that protects all of it is separate, and that is today's return guarantee. Four steps: how it works, what it costs, the 90% line that gets a home rejected, and the time window that closes halfway through the lease. The basis is the HUG posting retrieved on 2026-08-30, when this episode was prepared.

Step one: structure. When the lease ends and the landlord does not return the deposit, HUG pays it to the tenant and then pursues the landlord. From the tenant's side the counterparty changes from a landlord to a public institution. Eligible homes are apartments, row houses and multi-family units, detached, multi-room and multi-household houses, residential officetels (marked residential on the contract) and senior welfare housing; neighborhood commercial units are not eligible. The deposit cap is ₩700M in the capital region and ₩500M elsewhere, and deposits with monthly rent are converted using the rent conversion rate. The tenant must live in the home with resident registration and a fixed-date stamp. Corporations and foreigners can enroll as well as individuals, and beyond HUG branches and partner banks you can apply through Naver Pay, Kakao Pay, Toss and the Ansim Jeonse app. HF and SGI sell similar products, but today's numbers are HUG's.

Step two: price. There is one formula. Fee = guaranteed amount × annual rate × lease term ÷ 365. The rate is annual, so a two-year lease costs twice one year. Three things set the rate: the deposit bracket, whether the home is an apartment, and the home's debt ratio, meaning senior liens plus your deposit, divided by the assessed value, which is 90% of the home value as HUG calculates it. Rates run from 0.097% to 0.211% a year. The cheapest cell is a lightly mortgaged apartment, the dearest a heavily mortgaged villa. For a ₩300M apartment with a debt ratio of 70% or less: ₩321K a year, ₩642K for two years, ₩880 a day. The same ₩300M in a villa with a debt ratio above 80% is ₩1.182M for two years, nearly double. If senior liens alone exceed 50% of the assessed value, another 10% is added to the fee, making it ₩1,300,200. The home's risk is printed straight onto the premium.

Step three: the 90% line. This insurance does not take every home. Your deposit plus senior liens must be within 90% of the home's value, and the guarantee limit is 90% of the home value minus senior liens. There is one more condition: senior liens on their own must be within 60% of the assessed value (home value × 90%). In HUG's own example, a ₩100M home with ₩55M of senior liens is rejected even for a deposit of only ₩40M. For detached, multi-room and multi-household houses, senior liens plus the deposits of earlier tenants must be within 80% of the assessed value. That means deposit-heavy 'hollow' jeonse homes and heavily mortgaged homes are screened out. The public institution refuses homes whose risk it would have to absorb. Turned around, that becomes the tenant's weapon. Before you sign, check whether this home is one the guarantee would accept. Debt is not the only reason for refusal, though: ownership encumbrances such as auction or seizure, an unauthorized building, a lease shorter than one year, or a contract not signed through a licensed broker also block enrollment, so if you are refused, find out why.

Step four: time. A new lease can be enrolled only from the later of the balance-payment date and the move-in registration date until half the lease term has passed. For a two-year jeonse that means within one year of moving in (tenants in unsold-housing management areas announced by HUG get an extension to six months before the lease ends). A renewed lease likewise must be enrolled before half the renewed term passes. The rule stops people from enrolling only once risk becomes visible near the end, which is sound insurance logic, but it is a trap for tenants: by the time you feel uneasy the door is often already shut. The moment to decide is at signing, not when worry sets in. Some cautions: for detached, multi-room and multi-household houses the deposits of earlier tenants count as senior claims, so the bar is higher (within 80% of the assessed value), and if you cannot submit the other tenants' lease confirmations the maximum rate applies. If the deposit has not risen at renewal the home value is not re-assessed, so keeping a renewal guarantee running can be to your advantage.

If you are about to sign, the order is three steps: pull the property register and check the mortgages in section Eul, add your deposit and compare with 90% of the home value, then check eligibility on the Ansim Jeonse app or Naver Pay, Kakao Pay or Toss. Choosing a home that is confirmed eligible before you sign is itself the biggest prevention. If you already live in a jeonse home, two steps: check the calendar for whether half your lease has passed (if not, you can run an eligibility check today), and if renewal is coming, sign the renewal and renew the guarantee before half of that term passes. If the fee feels heavy, check whether you qualify for a discount first: households with income up to ₩50M get 60% off, bringing a ₩300M apartment with a debt ratio of 70% or less to ₩256,800 for two years, in the ₩200K range.

Two things to do now. If a jeonse contract is ahead, check eligibility first. If you are living in one and less than half the term has passed, calculate the fee today. Today's rates and limits are postings as retrieved on 2026-08-30 and may change, and the details of home valuation and claim procedures vary case by case, so confirm actual terms on HUG's inquiry screen and at the counter. Protecting a deposit is a matter of devices, not contracts, and a device can only be fully chosen before you sign.