A Pre-Contract Landlord Check Can Now Stand Alone as a Service

A people-facing search box has become a service-facing access channel

The Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG), a Korean public institution that provides housing guarantees, registered an access channel for its published list of habitual debt defaulters on the Big Data Open Platform on August 24, 2026. The list-disclosure system began on September 29, 2023, and the first list was published on December 27, 2023. Other websites and apps can now query it automatically through a defined method.

The access channel is free, and its licence terms carry no separate restrictions. There is no fixed refresh schedule, such as a set number of updates each month; it is described as updating automatically whenever the original list changes. But the refresh time and any delay before changes appear are not specified, so a service should not label this as a “real-time check.”

Anyone seeking to use it in a website, app, or research project must apply through the process HUG specifies. They select the item to use in the Big Data Open Platform, apply, then include the issued authentication key and required parameters in each query. Before operating a service, they should verify the expected approval time and the amount that can be retrieved in one request through the actual application page and the responsible contact.

The list does not include every landlord who returns a deposit late. For a landlord to appear, HUG must have paid the tenant’s deposit first; the amount HUG must recover from the landlord must total at least KRW 200 million; there must have been a separate deposit non-return within the three years before that event; and a court measure to preserve assets or compel recovery must have taken effect. One delayed KRW 200 million deposit does not automatically lead to disclosure.

Published fields include a person’s name or company name, age, address, deposit-return debt and non-performance period, the date HUG paid on their behalf and the amount it must recover, the number of court-measure applications, and the reference date. A person can be removed from the list after repaying the debt or where a legally defined reason applies. That makes the latest status immediately before a contract more important than an old saved result.

A pre-contract landlord check card can become its own tool

Consider a hypothetical neighbourhood licensed real-estate agency where Director Kim works with three staff members and brokers jeonse contracts. Jeonse is Korea’s large-deposit lease arrangement. Kim checks the certified copy of the real estate register, which shows the owner of the home and secured interests, then enters the landlord’s name again in HUG’s search box and compares the age and address in the result with identification details.

Today, Kim must note or capture the result and its reference date, then explain the meaning of the list again to the client. If the contract date moves, the process repeats. It also takes time to explain whether the result belongs to another person with the same name, or whether no search result can be described as safe.

The people-facing search box had to be opened manually each time. Because one list alone cannot determine whether a contract is safe, it was difficult to sell this as a separate service. Users also had little reason to install a new app just to search one name.

With automated access, Kim can enter the landlord’s name once and receive the HUG result and its reference date on the same contract screen. If there is a result, the flow can ask follow-up questions to check the age and published address. If there is no result, it can tell the user to keep checking the registry and whether a guarantee can be obtained. On the contract date, the same screen can run the check again and show only what changed.

The separable product is a “pre-contract landlord check card.” It does not need property search or electronic contracting. One screen only needs landlord-name search, same-name comparison, the latest check time, and the next items to inspect. It can also be sold as a small feature embedded in an agency website or an existing property app.

Many tasks still require human judgement. Someone must inspect the original identification of the contract party and confirm they are the same person, check that the owner on the registry matches the landlord in the contract, and verify authorisation documents for an agent-signed contract. No result on the list is not a guarantee of a “safe landlord,” so the product should not display a green safety signal.

The address on the list is the landlord’s published address. It is not guaranteed to be the address of the home being contracted. A risk alert by home address would first need to identify the registered owner of that home, then match that person to the person on the list. The service operator must also reread the source data so that removed people are not still shown, and attach the reference date and a link to HUG’s original record to every result.

Elsewhere, one lookup feature has also become a standalone service

London launched its “Check a Rogue Landlord or Agent” service on December 19, 2017, using records from 10 boroughs and the London Fire Brigade. Tenants can search by name or address for free and view confirmed actions such as local-government fines or court convictions.

It has since expanded to cover all 32 London boroughs. It does not turn complaints or anonymous reviews directly into a stigma: it publishes only confirmed enforcement records. That improves trust, but it cannot capture risks that never reached legal action.

New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development Online begins with a building address rather than a landlord’s name. Tenants enter an address to view complaints, housing-code violations, building registration, lawsuits, and eviction orders for free, and violation data updates daily.

In 2025, inspection violations under court orders for 1,858 New York City public housing buildings also entered the search scope. Bringing public records together on one address screen is useful, but a visible violation does not itself mean repair or resolution. The date and processing status should appear alongside it.

The private service OpenIgloo carved out a smaller piece from New York City public data. It offers free basic lookup with address-level violations, bedbug history, ownership and management information, and tenant reviews; it charges for more detailed building reports and listing-support features.

The point of these examples is that they did not begin by building a huge property platform. They began with the moment when someone wants to check one address before visiting a home, and displayed confirmed public records and user reviews as different kinds of information.

What could come from this

1. A three-minute check card for a first jeonse contract

• What it does: It looks up the landlord’s name, then shows age and published-address comparison questions, the reference date, and the next checks in sequence.
• Who uses it: A tenant in their 20s handling contract documents directly for the first time, even with help from an agent.
• Why now: The latest list can be pulled into the contract-check flow without moving back and forth to HUG’s separate search box.
• What goes on the first screen: Place a “Enter landlord name” field beside the statement, “Not appearing on the list does not mean the landlord is safe.”

2. A verification record sheet for small real-estate agencies

• What it does: It compiles the search result, check time, whether same-name comparison was completed, and the HUG original-record link into one sheet for each contract.
• Who uses it: A neighbourhood licensed real-estate agency where two or three staff members manage contract documents together without a separate IT administrator.
• Why now: It can reduce the step where staff search the HUG screen and copy the information back into their records.
• What goes on the first screen: Show today’s contract list and a status for each contract: “not checked,” “comparison needed,” or “re-check complete.”

3. Change alerts from contract date to final payment date

• What it does: It rechecks a saved landlord’s published status before the contract date, interim payment date, and final payment date, and alerts the tenant when it changes.
• Who uses it: Jeonse tenants paying the final balance one or two months after signing, and existing tenants approaching renewal.
• Why now: Because the original list updates automatically as needed, repeated checks can follow the latest status more easily than keeping a one-time screenshot.
• What goes on the first screen: Show the next recheck date, the latest reference date, and a chronological record containing only fields that changed from the prior result.

4. An intake-triage screen for housing counselling organisations

• What it does: It separates the HUG list result from registry and contract information submitted by the tenant, and moves consultations needing urgent additional checks to the top.
• Who uses it: An initial counsellor at a local housing counselling centre that receives multiple deposit non-return enquiries each day.
• Why now: Counsellors can begin a first check using the same criteria without copying each applicant’s name into a public search box.
• What goes on the first screen: Divide the intake list into three sections: “official list result,” “tenant statement,” and “documents not yet checked.”

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s HUG list, its disclosure conditions, and Korea’s jeonse market are Korean conditions, not a universal landlord-risk model. In your market, check whether an official source offers confirmed landlord, building, court, or enforcement records; what its update terms allow; and whether it can be used through an automated access channel. The transferable product idea is narrow: make the public-record check useful at the exact moment a person is preparing to sign.

What to check today

Within 30 minutes, call the HUG access-channel contact at 051-955-5863 and ask about the permitted scope for storing results, the time needed for removed information to be reflected, and the amount that can be retrieved in one request. If the answers are specific and support reliable contract-day rechecks and removal updates, a small check card is worth testing first. If the answers are unclear, narrow the product from storing people’s names to a tool that shows the result immediately after a query and sends the user to the original record.