Seoul's Global Real Estate Agency Program: A City-Certified Way to Rent in Your Own Language

5 min read

Soo House's rabbit-and-carrot verified ID illustration, used across guides about official Korean registration and certification programs

Our guide to jeonse, wolse and deposit protection covers what to check before you sign. It doesn't cover who you're sitting across the table with — and for most expats and foreign residents in Korea, that's the part that actually goes wrong. A contract you can't fully read, explained by someone whose English stops at "no problem," is how people miss a clause. Seoul has run an actual answer to that since 2008: a city certification for real estate offices that can legally negotiate and explain your lease in a language you speak.

  • 2008Year Seoul designated its first 20 Global Real Estate Agencies
  • 70/100Minimum score an office needs to be designated
  • Aug 14 – Sep 3, 2026This year's application window for new offices
  • ~35New offices Seoul planned to add in the 2026 round

What "Global Real Estate Agency" actually means

It isn't a marketing label an office can slap on its own window. It's a designation issued by the Seoul Metropolitan Government to licensed real estate offices (공인중개사) that pass a language screening — and the city has kept running the program and expanding it every year since 2008. A designated office keeps translated sale and lease contract templates on file, can walk you through the paperwork foreign residents specifically have to file, and is meant to act as a bridge between you and the neighborhood you're moving into, not just the transaction.

How an office becomes a Global Real Estate Agency: it applies during the yearly window, is scored out of 100 on foreign-language ability and professional ethics, and needs 70 or higher with a clean record to be designated Office applies Aug 14–Sep 3, 2026 Scored out of 100 Language: 80 pts Ethics: 20 pts 70+, clean record → Designated Designation runs on a yearly cycle — check the current list, not the sticker in the window.
The city's own 2026 recruitment notice sets the bar: 80 points for listening, speaking and writing in the office's chosen language, 20 for professional ethics, and a clean record under the Licensed Real Estate Agents Act for the past year.

Applicants also need to be an active, individually licensed broker-in-charge (개업공인중개사) operating in Seoul, and can pick up bonus points for past foreign-language transactions, international credentials or experience. None of that is guesswork on our part — it's the scoring rubric the city published for this year's round.

What you actually get, compared to a regular office

A regular office

May or may not speak your language well enough to negotiate in it. Contracts are Korean-only, and a friend's translation over the phone isn't a legal document.

A Global Real Estate Agency

Screened and city-certified to negotiate and explain your lease in your language, with translated contract templates on hand and guidance on the reports foreign residents have to file.

The sticker in the window isn't proof Designation is awarded per application cycle, not for life, and the city runs a fresh recruitment round every year. A framed certificate from a few years ago tells you an office passed once — it doesn't tell you it's on this year's list. Check the list itself before you trust the sticker.

How to actually find one

Seoul's own real estate portal has a filter built for exactly this: Seoul's Global Real Estate Agency search tool lets you search the current list by district (자치구) and office name, in Korean, English or Chinese. As of the last citywide breakdown the city published, in August 2019, the roughly 247 designated offices leaned English (183), then Japanese (42), with the heaviest concentration in Yongsan (58 offices) — unsurprising for the district with Seoul's densest foreign population — followed by Gangnam, Seocho and Mapo. Treat that as a hint about where options cluster, not as today's count; use the search tool itself for anything you're about to act on.

This year's window, and what it means if your language isn't covered yet

The 2026 recruitment round, open August 14 to September 3, planned to add roughly 35 offices covering English, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian and Vietnamese, among others — evaluated on the same 70-point bar. If you don't see an office for your language on the portal today, that's the pipeline to watch: newly designated offices get added to the list once this round's screening finishes, not on a fixed monthly schedule.

What we see at Soo House

Soo House connects expats and foreign residents in Korea with paid campaigns, classes and community meetups, and "does anyone have a real estate agent who actually speaks English" is one of the most recurring questions in our community feed — usually posted by someone who has already been burned once by a translation that turned out to be optimistic rather than accurate. The pattern we keep seeing isn't that people don't know deposits are risky; our renting guide covers that. It's that they don't know a government-vetted list of language-capable agents exists at all, so they end up trusting whoever a friend happened to use.

Your next hop: before you book a single apartment viewing, pull up the search tool, filter by your district and your language, and start your list there instead of from a random shopfront sign.

Checked in September 2026 against the Seoul Metropolitan Government's own Global Real Estate Agency program page, its 2026 designation recruitment notice (published August 13, 2026, covering the August 14 – September 3, 2026 window, target of roughly 35 offices, and the 80/20-point scoring rubric), and its August 19, 2019 citywide status release (program start in 2008 with 20 offices; 247 offices, language and district breakdown as of that date). The live search tool is at land.seoul.go.kr/land/broker/globalbrokerInfo.do — it did not display a current citywide total at the time of writing, so use it to check a specific district or office rather than relying on any total number here. For deposit protection and lease basics, see our renting guide.

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