we're on our way to find an apartment two for two strikeouts not so great i think we've been to
seven or eight realtors today said no dogs no dogs no dogs what's up guys it's josh and vicki we just
moved to seoul south korea three months ago from valencia spain so in this video we're going to be
sharing some tips some tricks everything you need to know to rent your apartment right here in seoul
there are lots of frustrations and you definitely need to know about them also stick around to the
end because we're going to be sharing what our apartment's like how much we pay and where we live
so we've lived in many different places including los angeles denver columbus ohio and valencia
spain but nothing compared to renting process in seoul i was born and grew up in seoul but until i
moved to the us in 2012 i lived with my parents so this whole process completely new to me too
in order to talk about the renting process here in korea there are two major things you need to
know about that's Jeonse and Wolse korean heart let's talk about Jeonse system Jeonse
is a system that you give very large lump sum amount of money to a landlord typically about
two year contract other than that large lump sum you don't pay anything else for two years sounds
pretty good right the catches the large lump sum is really large we're talking minimum of
a hundred thousand us dollars goes up to three hundred four hundred five hundred thousand that
is a lot of money most of people don't have that kind of money in the bank account i know i don't
so they go to the bank and get a loan now what a lot of people think is that the interest that
you'll be paying for that loan is most likely going to be lower than the monthly rent you're
going to be paying with the voice assistant that we're going to talk about in a minute
now after two years you're gonna get that large lump sum bath from a landlord or the next tenant
okay Wolse is something you guys are much more used to kind of like in the us where you put your
first and last month's rent down here you're going to put down a large lump sum of money and
then you're going to have a payment every month okay typically those large lump sums of money
start off around five million one or five thousand dollars but they can go all the way up to 100 000
or 100 million won at the end of the two-month contract you're going to get that deposit money
back now typically the more money you put down for your secure deposit your rent can be incrementally
decreased so i hope that helps explain the Wolse system all right now you know the renting
systems in korea let's talk about our different types of housing so first option is apartment
it's like a complex with huge high rise building as you can see behind me but it comes with a lot
of amenities they have a beautiful garden they have color changing rivers they have majestic
waterfalls it even comes with wildlife watch out shops and restaurants and cafes playground daycare
you name it so it is a preferred way of living for a lot of koreans but they will only have a gente
rarely rarely would say and if it is worth it it's going to be very expensive
and even change as you can imagine it does come with a high price tag unless you purchase
it so the second type of housing we want to talk about are villas some are old and some
are new but typically these types of apartments are going to have around 8 to 12 different units
inside the building the third option is office dell office cell is kind of like a multi-purpose
building they have a commercial unit and also residential they're typically new and nice
and they're conveniently located as close to a lot of public transportation and very busy area
but the units are usually studio so they're very small but they also will have a lot of a voice a
option so if you're a single don't mind a tiny space this might be a good option for you
sorry mushroom guy's coming let the mushroom guy pass first
now that you know what type of properties that there are there are several ways to look for
them first you can use apps like checkbook peter pan neighbor realty and many more so the apps
are pretty convenient but you kind of have to be careful because some listings can be misleading
or sort of fake so i think the best way is go to the neighborhood that you want to live in and
go to the realtor's office there are many of them the two words you want to look for there says
and it says those two words you want to know and just go into the office and talk to them about
the properties that you're looking for now the tricky part is here um you probably want to be
with someone who speaks fluent korean otherwise communication can be a little bit tricky so
bring your friends so we started our apartment hunting on day number two we are as jet lagged as
could be so this is our day two we're still pretty jet-lagged uh we're pretty much a zombie yesterday
i got so tired so like i mentioned earlier we started our house hunting process by visiting
the realtor's office in the area that we wanted to live so we walked in we talked to the guy about
our budget and you know type of place we want to live and and we have a dog he showed us one place
uh we have a very little footage because someone was living in there actually but we really like
that place it was clean it was like an office style building one bedroom no it was actually
a one bedroom which is very rare for the office though yeah but here's the catch no dogs no dog
the realtor tried to like convince the uh the landlord about our dogs very well behaved and
things like that it was a hard no so then he's like okay well let's show you the second property
so we walked with him to get to the second place it was another nice brand new office
style it was a smaller than the one that we saw um this one actually nobody was living there we
filmed a little bit uh they had loft right has like a really kind of like steep narrow stairs
and stuff like that but it was nice now our realtor asked is it okay if they bring a dog
nope no two for two strikeouts so we gotta find another place first we're gonna eat some lunch
cheers
so we went got some lunch put ourselves together the third place oh god where do i start so this
third place is a different realtor's office we walked in it was a very old guy he said just
come with me and it was first of all it was on the ground level we couldn't film anything because
the uh the guy was still living in there i really had no words for it i've never seen that place
was bad it was filthy it was very bad and the worst part was the bathroom and even the lady
who was showing me the property she's like oh we can clean all this because it was that dirty
so i was like okay that was no that was a hard note for me no from us
a couple of realtors offices that we stopped by they say okay leave your phone number
let me call around some places see if i can find something that suits you
then i'll call you back pretty felt defeated depressed wondering are you really going to
find a place in seoul and just exhausted i mean it's exhausting i mean we walked so much so many
realtors offices and there's just no no no no no no no no no and then there's always hope i think
we've been to seven or eight realtors today we just got a call back on a hot lead fingers crossed
it is a nice place the
so we have put down one million one deposit to hold the apartment until we're able to
transfer more funds about nine hundred fifty dollars 950 bucks it was a good day entire day
celebration day cheers and everything happened in about an hour it's very quick so after wiring the
million one now the the realtor start working on the contract now when your contract is ready now
you're going to go and sign the contract with the landlord and for our case we had a two different
realtors involved because the landlords realtors and our side realtor i don't know how that's
typical or i'm not quite sure but that's what we did okay when you sign the contract you're gonna
be wiring the 10 of your security deposit money to a landlord in our case our security deposit
was 30 million won so since we already wired a million one we had another two million one
left and that's what we wire to a landlord the one thing you want to make sure is the there
is a document called the tunkibudungbun it's kind of like a show that whether landlord has
any large debt or anything you know lean against the property type of thing so that way you know
you feel comfortable when you give that large lump sum to a landlord welcome to day six here in korea
we are about to sign our big lease sign their names on the dotted line for our apartment
and uh we couldn't be happier all right we have signed the contract
so it was easy process owner was really nice um the we had a two real estate agent thoroughly
explained everything so it was great so now um we're just waiting for the date of moving in
and that's the time we're going to be paying the rest of our deposit money so let's go celebrate
so we live in songpagu it's a beautiful uh goo just south of the han river where the magnificent
lotte world tower is we love it here it's super clean it's super nice her hometown she actually
grew up right around the corner from where we live now we love it so as far as dollars go our
monthly rent for this apartment is 1.6 million won and of course we put down
30 million won um as our security deposit which we will get back at the end of our two-year lease
yeah i think it's uh we have a two bedroom and one bathroom i think it's reasonably priced so
for a very good location yeah i mean it's brand new we love it um so they welcome audio yeah and
they let her do it so honestly we didn't have many choices so we would love to share our
apartment with you so you can see what it looks like inside you're not welcome to come over um
please don't find us um but we you may be able to see that video pop up here if not
you'll see another awesome soul video hope to see on the next one