The no-home period in Korea’s subscription score is not the time you have gone without a home. Fifteen years of renting from age 20 counts as zero years if the start date has not arrived. The item is worth 32 points at 2 points a year, and most of the errors in it come not from adding wrong but from picking the wrong date.
The start date is the latest of three. ① The day you turn 30 — or ② the day a marriage was registered, if that came first. And ③ if the household sold a home later than that, the count restarts on the day of the sale.
Between ① and ② the earlier date wins; between that result and ③ the later one does. The two comparisons run in opposite directions.
Three dates, two rules
That there are two rules rather than one is what makes this item slippery.
The first comparison — age 30 against the marriage date. The period runs from age 30, except that a marriage registered before then starts it instead. In effect, the earlier of the two. So for someone who registered a marriage at 33, the marriage does nothing to this item at all.
The second comparison — that date against the sale. If the household owned a home at any point after the date settled above, the period restarts on the day it was sold. However early a date you secure in the first comparison, the second can erase it.
Four people born in March 1991
Born on the same day, applying to the same notice dated 1 September 2026. All four are 35.
| Case | Count starts | Points |
|---|---|---|
| A · unmarried | 15 Mar 2021 (age 30) | 12 |
| B · married at 28 | 1 Jun 2019 | 16 |
| C · married at 33 | 15 Mar 2021 | 12 |
| D · as B, sold in 2022 | 20 Oct 2022 | 8 |
B registered the marriage on 1 Jun 2019; C on 1 Jun 2024; D is B with a home sold on 20 Oct 2022. Counting from the start date to the notice (1 Sep 2026) gives 5, 7, 5 and 3 years — two points a year, starting at two for under a year.
B and C differ by four points. Both married; only one gained anything — whether it happened before 30 decided it. B and D differ by eight, and here owning a home once erased not three years but four, because the sale becomes the start date and everything before it disappears wholesale.
The household owns it, not you
Whether there is a home is judged across every member of the household, not the applicant alone. Article 2 of the Rules on Housing Supply defines a member of a household without a home as someone in a household where no member owns a home.
The household is the applicant, the spouse, and the ascendants and descendants on the same residence registration (art. 2(2-3)). A spouse is included even on a separate registration — this is where it most often goes wrong. Conversely, siblings and cohabitants are not household members even on the same registration.
And the text carries two parentheses — ascendants “including the spouse’s ascendants”, descendants “including a descendant’s spouse”. So parents-in-law living with you count, and so does a son- or daughter-in-law. A home in their name breaks the no-home status.
So a home in a spouse’s name cannot be waved off as somebody else’s. A separate registration does not separate the household, and the no-home status breaks.
Owning one and still counting as none
Article 53 of the same Rules sets the test for ownership, and one small, low-priced home is treated as no home. The 18 December 2024 revision put the thresholds here.
| Type | Floor area | Value (capital · other) |
|---|---|---|
| Apartment | 60㎡ or less | KRW 160m · 100m or less |
| Other housing | 85㎡ or less | KRW 500m · 300m or less |
The non-apartment row widened sharply at the end of 2024 — area from 60 to 85㎡, and the capital-region value from KRW 160m to 500m. Anyone who wrote off subscription because they own one villa or officetel should look again.
But the small, low-priced home is not the only case article 53 makes. “Owned, but treated as none” runs to twelve sub-paragraphs, and which of them apply depends on the supply type.
One proviso does that. For public rental housing, sub-paragraphs 6, 9 and 11 do not apply; for special supply under article 46, only sub-paragraph 6 is switched off — and since the small, low-priced rule is sub-paragraph 9, it applies to special supply and is absent from public rental.
The six not shown cover narrow cases: individual housing developers, workers’ dormitories, ruins, unauthorised buildings, leftover units sold first-come. And sub-paragraphs 1, 3 and 7 carry a condition — disposal (or demolition, or correction of the record) within three months of being notified as ineligible. The structure is not “safe in advance” but “three months to fix it once caught”.
And for the scored no-home period, Appendix 1, 1(d) hands the test to “article 23(4) and article 53”, so it does apply to the scored share of private housing. One catch: an apartment that is urban-lifestyle housing falls on the “other” row of the table above, not the apartment row — the text pulls that case out separately.
Finding your start date in three steps
Two documents will do it. The order matters, so keep to it.
① Write down the day you turn 30. Thirty years from the birthday, counted the Korean legal way — from the birthday itself. Someone born 1 September 1996 starts counting on 1 September 2026; someone born on the 2nd still scores zero on that notice.
② If a marriage was registered earlier, use that instead. Not the wedding day — the registration date, which appears on the marriage certificate. Later than age 30, and step ① stands.
③ If a home was sold after ②, use the sale. If there were several, the last one. But what exactly counts as “the sale date” is set by the Rules themselves.
Article 23(4) says that “ownership and the no-home period are measured on the dates set out below, and where the processing dates under sub-paragraphs 1 and 2 differ, the earlier one governs” — sub-paragraph 1 being the date the building registry received the filing and sub-paragraph 2 the building ledger’s processing date. This piece had written “the date of transfer registration”, which is not the text’s wording; it is corrected here. Where a few days move a whole band, the wording matters.
Presale rights run on different dates again. A contract uses the reported contract date; a sale uses the reported payment-completion date; a transfer by gift uses the name-change date on the contract with the developer.
Who counts here is the applicant and their spouse only — the provision reads “where the applicant or their spouse has owned a home, from the day they became without a home after disposing of it” (Appendix 1, 1(a)3). A parent living with you having sold a home years ago does not push your start date back.
The requirement that every household member be without a home «now» is unchanged (same sub-paragraph, 1). “Past disposal — applicant and spouse”, “present ownership — the whole household”: the two rules look at different people.
From that date to the date of the notice of tenant recruitment is the period. The notice date, not the application date and not the announcement of winners.
The whole table — seventeen steps to 32
Two points per step, one step a year, stopping at fifteen years.
| Period | Points | Period | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owns a home · unmarried under 30 | 0 | 8 to under 9 years | 18 |
| Under 1 year | 2 | 9 to under 10 years | 20 |
| 1 to under 2 years | 4 | 10 to under 11 years | 22 |
| 2 to under 3 years | 6 | 11 to under 12 years | 24 |
| 3 to under 4 years | 8 | 12 to under 13 years | 26 |
| 4 to under 5 years | 10 | 13 to under 14 years | 28 |
| 5 to under 6 years | 12 | 14 to under 15 years | 30 |
| 6 to under 7 years | 14 | 15 years or more | 32 |
| 7 to under 8 years | 16 |
Note that zero is followed by two, not one. Turning 30 skips a step rather than climbing one. And the ceiling is 32, so past 45 there is nothing left to earn here — only dependents and the account remain.
One day is worth two points
The score is a staircase, so where the notice date falls against the anniversary of the start date moves a whole step.
| Count starts | Notice date | Period | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Mar 2021 | 14 Mar 2026 | 4 years (one day short) | 10 |
| 15 Mar 2021 | 15 Mar 2026 | 5 years | 12 |
Two points across one day. You cannot choose the notice date, but you can know in advance when your step arrives. If it is days away, waiting for the next notice can be the better move — assuming nothing else changes in between.
The account has the same staircase at one point a year, half the width. When both steps fall near each other, waiting a month can be worth three points. The calculator reports both dates together.
Can separating the household avoid it?
When a parent’s home makes the household an owner, splitting the registration is the obvious thought. There are two branches here and they answer differently.
Ascendants do drop out of the household when the registration splits. The household covers ascendants and descendants on the same registration, so a parent on a different one takes their home with them. But they leave the dependent count at the same moment — two parents is ten points. Restoring the no-home item to 32 while losing ten dependents points nets the difference, not the 32. Running both cases through the calculator is quicker than reasoning about it.
A spouse does not drop out. A spouse belongs to the household regardless of registration, so a home in their name cannot be split away. Descendants on the spouse’s registration come along too.
And a separation has to reflect where people actually live. Moving an address on paper conflicts with the reporting duty under the Resident Registration Act, and in subscription it ends in an ineligibility finding. The precise test applied here we could not verify — before weighing the arithmetic, it is worth checking whether the arrangement is real.
Questions that remain
I have had no home since I was 20. Why does none of it count?
Because the table is built that way. The start is fixed at age 30, so no amount of no-home time before it registers. What happens instead is a jump from 0 to 2 on that birthday, then 2 more each year. At 45, fifteen years in, the ceiling of 32 arrives and it stops.
Is registering a marriage always an advantage?
In this item, only before 30. A registration after that does not move the start date, because age 30 is already earlier. Separately a spouse adds one dependent, worth 5 points — and, in the other direction, if the spouse owns a home the household owns one and this item goes to zero. It opens both ways.
What happens to the start date after a divorce?
The rule does not address divorce (Appendix 1 rechecked 23 September 2026): item 1(a)(3) goes as far as “the homeless period is based on the applicant and spouse … and where married before 30, counts from the date of marriage registration on the marriage certificate” (our translation), with nothing on divorce or remarriage. Where a marriage registered before 30 started the count and the marriage later ended, whether that start date survives or reverts to age 30 is not something we could confirm in the regulation. The same for remarriage. We are leaving it open rather than asserting — better to ask the subscription service or the developer directly.
Does an inherited home count as owning one?
As a rule, yes. Article 53 does address inheritance in sub-paragraph 1, but the door is narrower than expected: “where it is established that a co-ownership share in a home was acquired by inheritance and the share is disposed of within three months of being notified as ineligible by the developer.”
Three conditions. ① It must be a co-ownership share — a whole house inherited outright is not covered. ② The clock starts at the notice of ineligibility, not before — the provision offers a chance to fix it once caught, not safety in advance. ③ Three months to dispose of it.
So “inherited, so fine” should be read the other way round. An inherited home may still qualify through the small, low-priced route (sub-paragraph 9) or the 20㎡ route (sub-paragraph 5), and sub-paragraph 2 carries its own inheritance proviso for detached houses outside urban areas. Check the property register and the notice together.
Which day exactly counts as the sale?
The Rules fix it (article 23(4)). It is the date the building registry received the filing, or the building ledger’s processing date if that is earlier — the text says “where the two processing dates differ, the earlier one governs.” Not the contract date, not the balance-payment date. Pull the certified copy of the register and read it off — a few days can move a whole step, and a step is two points.
Sources and where to check
Appendix 1 to the Rules on Housing Supply — the bands for the 32-point no-home item. The version in force took effect on 15 June 2026 (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ordinance No. 1592).
Article 2 of the same Rules — the definition of a household without a home and the scope of the household. Article 53 — the ownership test in twelve sub-paragraphs and the small, low-priced home thresholds (revised 18 December 2024). Article 23(4) — the reference dates for ownership and for the no-home period.
The table and the counting rules were cross-checked against two unrelated sources. One source cannot reveal that it is stale. Appendix 1 and articles 2 and 53 were opened and read on the national statute portal on 26 August 2026. The 17 no-home bands and the small, low-priced thresholds matched the text, as did the age-30, marriage-registration and disposal-date rules.
Three things were corrected — the two parentheses in the definition of a household (a spouse’s ascendants, a descendant’s spouse), the fact that the disposal date is measured on the applicant and their spouse only, and the gap this piece had left open about which supply types the exception reaches.
On 11 September 2026 the full text of article 53 and article 23(4) were opened, filling two more gaps. This piece had treated article 53 as the small, low-priced rule alone; it is in fact twelve sub-paragraphs — an inherited co-ownership share (1), a home under 20㎡ (5), one owned by an ascendant over 60 (6), an auction purchase for an unpaid deposit (11), and a 2024 purchase of the home you rented (12) are now set out above. And one thing was corrected — the sale date had been given as “the date of transfer registration”, where the text says the date the registry received the filing, or the ledger’s date if earlier (article 23(4)).
Where to check further
The certified copy of the property register. The date of a sale lives here, and it can differ from the contract and balance dates.
Your residence registration, and your spouse’s. The household is not complete from the applicant’s registration alone. A spouse on a separate one has to be checked separately.
The notice for the development. Whether the small, low-priced exception reaches that supply type is settled there.
The building ledger too. The sale date is the earlier of the registry filing and the ledger processing date, so the register alone can be off by days.
To add the parts up, put the dates straight into the subscription score calculator. The remaining item is in how the dependent count is drawn.
