Deceptive Applications for Private Apartments Surpass 1,600 in Five Years

[Financial News] Over the past five years, more than 1,600 fraudulent applications have been detected at private apartment sales sites nationwide. Fraudulent transfers of registered residence, in which applicants falsely move their registered address, accounted for 82.7% of all cases. In privately built housing, points are awarded for up to six dependents, and the practice is believed to be a ploy to gain an advantage in the scoring system.
According to the report titled 'Results of On-Site Inspections of Private-Sale Sites: Violations Detected and Measures Taken,' which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) submitted on the 4th to Yoo Sang-bum of the People Power Party, a member of the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee of the National Assembly, 1,669 fraudulent applications were identified among 212,892 households across 350 private-sale complexes nationwide from 2021 through June last year.
Fraudulent transfers of registered residence were the most common type, accounting for 1,380 cases. Privately built housing awards an additional five points for each dependent, up to a maximum of six, so having more family members is advantageous for increasing one's score.
Cases involving fraudulent address transfers surged from 157 in 2021 to 491 in 2024. There were 245 such cases through the first half of last year, indicating a continued upward trend.
Other violations included 240 cases involving the sale of housing subscription accounts and move-in eligibility, 47 cases involving sham marriages and divorces, and two cases involving forged or manipulated qualifications.
During this period, 215 illegal acts by apartment suppliers, in addition to those committed by individual applicants, were also detected. The most common type, accounting for 205 cases, involved prearranged allocations disguised as first-come, first-served contracts. This practice, known as 'opaque preferential sales,' involves allocating in advance to specific individuals the remaining units created by the cancellation of ineligible winners or the abandonment of contracts, rather than offering them sequentially to reserve occupants.
Meanwhile, of the 655 cases referred to the police for investigation and subsequently forwarded to prosecutors, only 273 resulted in the completed cancellation of the actual winning applications and contracts. Yoo said, "The fact that hundreds of cases were uncovered through sample inspections alone means that even more illegal activity is taking place behind the scenes at private-sector sites beyond the reach of monitoring."
[email protected] Kwon Jun-ho Reporter