There is no shortage of guides listing the steps to buying a home in Korea. What is rarer is a guide to why the steps come in that order. The order is not custom — it falls out of the moments at which the statutes hand over rights.
Money leaves in three instalments: deposit, interim payment, balance. But the point where you lose the right to walk away, and the point where the property becomes yours, sit somewhere else entirely. Neither lines up with a payment date.
Which is why checks have to be repeated at each stage. Here is what to look at when, with the provision behind it.
1. The deposit is the price of walking away. Civil Act article 565 allows rescission by forfeiting the deposit, or repaying double, “until one of the parties begins performance”. Past that line, there is no walking away.
2. Paying the balance does not make it yours. Civil Act article 186 — “a change in real rights over immovables by juristic act takes effect only upon registration”. Ownership arrives with registration, not payment.
3. The transaction-price screen lags by up to 30 days. A sale must be reported within 30 days of the contract date (Real Estate Transaction Report Act art. 3), and a cancellation within 30 days of being confirmed (art. 3-2). A dead deal can sit on screen for a while.
The order comes from the statutes, not from habit
People usually say “property, price, registry, loan”. Each of those boxes has a different law behind it.
| Stage | What gets settled here | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Gauge the price | Whether the market figure is current or stale | Transaction Report Act art. 3 and 3-2 |
| Read the registry | Who owns it, what debt is attached | Registration of Real Estate Act — reading the registry |
| Pay the deposit | The last stretch you can still reverse | Civil Act art. 565 |
| Pay the interim | Usually where “performance begins” | The converse of art. 565 |
| Balance and registration | This is when you become owner | Civil Act art. 186 |
| The loan is missing from this table on purpose — see below. It is not a stage; it is a condition running across all of them. | ||
The reversible stretch ends at “beginning performance”
Article 565(1) of the Civil Act, as it stands:
“Where one party to a sale has delivered money or other goods to the other at the time of the contract as a deposit, security or the like, unless otherwise agreed between the parties, the deliverer may forfeit it and the recipient may repay double it to rescind the contract, until one of the parties begins performance.”
Three things to read out of it.
- “Unless otherwise agreed” — a special clause in the contract comes first. Read the special terms before anything else.
- “Until one begins performance” — the line is commencement, not the balance. Handing over an interim payment usually counts.
- “One of the parties” — even if you have done nothing, the other side beginning performance closes the window.
So the interim payment date is not about when money moves; it is the date that fixes when you can no longer back out. Anything still unverified has to be finished before it.
Paying the balance does not make it yours
Civil Act article 186 is a single sentence: “A change in real rights over immovables by juristic act takes effect only upon registration.”
Money paid in full and keys in hand, the owner remains the other party until the registration goes through. If a new registration comes in from their side during that gap, priority can flip. The practice of pinning the balance payment and the registration application to the same day comes from exactly this. The step-by-step is in the apartment purchase process.
The price screen lags by up to 30 days
Published transaction prices are reported prices, and the statute sets when reporting happens.
| What | Deadline | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting a sale | Within 30 days of the contract date | art. 3(1) |
| Reporting rescission, invalidity or cancellation | Within 30 days of it being confirmed | art. 3-2(1) |
| Where a licensed agent drew up and delivered the contract, the agent reports (art. 3(3)). If one party refuses, the other may report alone (art. 3(2)). | ||
We watched this happen. On 10 August we pulled the reported sales for Jongno-gu, Seoul, contracts dated July 2026: 28. The next day, same district, same month, same query: 31. Three deals were not signed overnight — three filings, for deals already signed, arrived that day. A month that looks empty is usually a month that has not finished filling in.
Two consequences follow.
- The newest figure on screen is not today's market. That contract may be up to a month old. In a fast-moving stretch, a month is a lot.
- Dead deals linger. Cancellations also get 30 days, so a price that no longer exists can stay visible for a while.
So read transaction prices in groups, never one at a time, and treat a single outlier with suspicion. The wider market picture continues in the 2026 Korean housing market.
Some rights never appear on the registry
The registry comes back clean — and something is still unaccounted for. Article 3(1) of the Housing Lease Protection Act reads:
“A lease shall take effect against third parties from the following day on which the tenant has completed delivery of the house and resident registration, even where no registration of the lease exists. In such cases resident registration is deemed made at the time the move-in report is filed.”
And paragraph 4 of the same article lands directly on the buyer: “A transferee of a leased house shall be deemed to have succeeded to the status of the lessor.”
| What you are checking | On the registry? | What reaches the buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgages, provisional attachments, provisional registrations | Yes | Discharge terms must be written into the contract |
| A tenant with opposing power | No | You succeed to the lessor's position (art. 3(4)) |
| Fixed date, deposit amount | No | Check separately via resident-registration confirmation |
| So “the registry is clean” and “the house is empty” are different statements. What exactly you would be taking on is set out in tenant rights in Korea. | ||
The loan is a condition, not a stage
Guides often park “look into financing” in the last box. In practice it is a figure that has to be settled before the deposit is paid — because if the amount falls short, there is no reversing once performance has begun.
And no public API returns a borrowing limit. An individual limit is computed from income, existing debt and collateral value, so it is something to calculate, not something to fetch. Pin down the monthly payment and total interest first with the loan interest calculator.
Money that lands after the contract is worth counting early too. Acquisition tax attaches at balance and registration (acquisition tax on homes), and the agency fee is agreed within a ceiling (real-estate agency fees).
A few things worth asking back
How large should the deposit be?
No statutory ratio exists. But since article 565 works by forfeiting the deposit or repaying double, the amount is the price of the deal falling apart. The customary 10% is not a figure any law sets.
Does a holding deposit count?
It is judged by substance, not label. Article 565 says “as a deposit, security or the like”, which is deliberately broad, so depending on the amount and the messages exchanged a contract may be found to exist. We did not review case law for this article.
How many times should I pull the registry?
Since article 186 makes rights move at the moment of registration, a registry pulled at contract time guarantees nothing about balance day. Pulling it again at contract, interim and balance is what the provision implies.
Why do the asking price and the transaction price differ?
A transaction price is a reported past contract; an asking price is a present hope. On top of that the transaction figure carries the lag of up to 30 days above. Them differing is the normal state.
Sources
- Statute — Civil Act article 565 (deposit for rescission). Source of “until performance begins” and “unless otherwise agreed”.
- Statute — Civil Act article 186 (effect of changes in real rights over immovables) — one sentence, registration or nothing.
- Statute — Real Estate Transaction Report Act article 3 and article 3-2 — the source of both 30-day windows.
- Statute — Housing Lease Protection Act article 3 (opposing power). Paragraphs 1 and 4 give effect without registration and succession to the lessor's position.
- Our own working — the table pairing each stage with its provision, and the two diagrams, were built by cross-reading the statutes above.
Where to check further
- Exactly when “performance begins” — case law not reviewed. The provision says only “begins” and sets no test. The interim payment is the usual candidate, but it turns on the facts and we did not assert it.
- The effect of a holding deposit is left open for the same reason. It depends on the contract and the messages exchanged.
- Rights invisible on the registry extend beyond tenants with opposing power. This article checked only the Housing Lease Protection Act side.
Written as of August 2026. Rescission deposits, transfer of real rights, reporting deadlines and opposing power all come straight from the statutes, and the table pairing stages with provisions is our own, marked as such. Special terms in an individual contract come first, so treat this as a way to understand why the sequence runs as it does. If you are approaching this through a new-build subscription instead, the housing subscription account is the earlier step.
