The charter system, which is the only lease agreement in the OECD that exists only in South Korea. For more than 100 years, it has served as a stepping stone to the provision of a home for ordinary people who cannot afford to buy and sell and are burdened with rent. However, in recent years, there has been a wide range of charter scams, tin can charters, and reverse charters, and the number of tenants suffering from the dysfunction of charters has increased a lot.

The Three Lease Laws, the Charter Fund Loan, and the Charter Guarantee Insurance, which were implemented in the name of housing welfare for ordinary people, had the side effect of increasing the charter price, and the charter price in the second half of 3 reached a record high. Contracts signed at the highest charter price are due to expire from the second half of this year to April next year. It is feared that the "reverse tax crisis", in which landlords fail to return the rental deposit on time, will intensify. As various cases of damage caused by charters, such as charter fraud, reverse tax difficulties, and gap speculation, continued, the government came up with a position to fix the charter system.

At some point, in our society, a rental deposit has been perceived as money that can only be returned when the next tenant is found. Thinking that house prices would rise and that the next tenant would be available, landlords overlooked the fact that the security deposit was a debt. As the number of landlords who sell apartments with excessive leverage called charter and sell them with gap investments or reinvest them with a rental deposit increases, there are many cases where they cannot return the rental deposit.


"Charters have been abused as a leverage for multi-homeowners, and I think it's a very difficult time to say that this is the housing of ordinary people."
- Chae Sang-wook, CEO of Connected Ground

"Shouldn't we now go in the direction of stopping and eliminating all the excessive benefits to the charter system itself?"
- Chun-Wook Hong, CEO of Prism Investment Advisory


The charter system has been reduced to a means of gap speculation rather than a stepping stone for ordinary people to afford their own homes. Some people are even calling for the "uselessness of charters" and "abolitionism" of charters. Has the lifespan of the charter system reached its limit? Is there any way to revive the net function of leases that lower the cost of housing?

This week's episode of SBS New Story 427 highlighted the problems and countermeasures of the charter system, which has degenerated into a means of encouraging gap speculation.