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Staff Reporter
For Julian Barker and his girlfriend from South Africa, deciding to leave a school-arranged single-room apartment and look for a new place to live was quite an adventure.
"We had no idea how much it costs to rent an apartment in Seoul, or what size of apartment we should expect," Julian recollected.
They managed to land an apartment that was slightly larger and had a separate bedroom, but still struggled due to a lack of information.
"Not knowing what to expect is a difficulty that expats face in this country," he said. "It would be a great help if information regarding realty were available on the Internet."
Charles Fullerton recently heard the complaints from his foreign peers, irritated by Korean realtors' poor English speaking and listening abilities.
"They (friends) were not shown what they were looking for. The agents did not really listen to what they were interested in and kept showing them places they would never have wanted," Charles said. "They were quickly frustrated and ended up leaving and looking in other areas."
He believes language is the most obvious and practical barrier in searching for a house to rent in Korea. Outside Itaewon - a district in central Seoul that is popular with expats and foreign tourists - there are very few realtors capable of doing their job in English, he stressed.
Adding to the woes, Charles explained, were different concepts and definitions of housing policies and contract terms.
"'Jeonsae' (a prepaid lease system) is a very foreign concept to nearly all non-Koreans, it takes a while to learn about these things," he said.
Those mentioned above are a fraction of the difficulties facing foreign house-hunters here. It's never easy to turn the entire environment foreigner friendly in a short time period.
A 2009 survey of 300 long-term foreign residents here by the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) cited a lack of housing information offered in foreign languages and limited foreign-language speaking realtors as one of the major complaints.
"Overall conditions have improved, but there is still a long way to go," KOTRA said about the survey, the latest available.
To help foreigners ease their worries, though to a limited degree, a ward office in Seoul recently introduced an unprecedented crash course for realtors in its precinct: English classes specializing in housing deals terminology and language.
Seocho District Ward Office in southern Seoul ran the 12-week program to enable participating realtors to better assist foreigners with little knowledge of the Korean language. The district head Park Sung-joong said, "The latest program is part of our ultimate blueprint for establishing a 'true' global town."
The course, taught by English-speaking real estate experts, is comprised of two segments: English communication focused on housing deals and theoretical study about how to fill in an official English-language housing contract form.
"Many house-hunting foreigners have shouldered extra commissions to hire interpreters or English-speaking realtors from Itaewon. But the program is expected to ease the burden," said Seo Hui-bong, a Seocho official familiar with the program. "Housing deals require expertise. Therefore, the program is mapped out to improve not only the English proficiency of those taking the course but also obtain skills on how to explain very Korean concepts used in housing deals to foreign clients."
"My expectations are very high," said Hyun Im-seon, 43, a realtor in Seocho who applied for the course.
Those completing the course with excellent scores will be allowed to post a signboard that reads "English Spoken Here" at their offices.
Seocho, an affluent residential district in southern Seoul is where the headquarters of the country's three major conglomerates ― Samsung, Hyundai Motor and GS ― are located. In addition, hundreds of private language institutes, mainly teaching English, and a concentration of English-speaking foreigners, are lined alongside its main boulevard.
For that reason, it has seen the number of housing contracts by expats in the district skyrocket in recent years.
In 2009 alone, nearly 2,000 deals were signed by foreign nationals either to rent or purchase a house in Seocho, a statistic from the office showed.
"The majority of the deals were to rent a house on a monthly payment basis, followed by apartment purchasing," a Seocho spokesman said. "Opening deals to buy land is sporadically reported, but not that common."
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