Foreign buyers of Korean homes must now report visa status and residence — contracts signed from 10 February 2026

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport promulgated the amended Enforcement Decree and Rules on 9 December 2025 and brought them into force on 10 February 2026. The new provisions apply to contracts concluded on or after that date, so anything signed by 9 February 2026 is reported on the old form. The core change is a longer list of reportable items: where the buyer is a foreign national, the report must state the status of stay (visa type), the Korean address, and whether the buyer lives in Korea for 183 days or more. In effect, whether the buyer actually lives here becomes visible at the reporting stage.

Funding checks tighten further for homes inside a land transaction permission zone. The funding plan and supporting documents, previously required only for housing deals in speculation-overheated districts, now extend to home purchases inside permission zones. The form itself was rewritten: loan types are broken out, the name of the financial institution must be written in directly, and the buyer must set out overseas funding in detail — borrowings and deposits brought from abroad and the names of the foreign financial institutions — along with domestic funding such as assumed lease deposits and business-purpose loans.

This sits alongside an earlier measure. After deliberation by the Central Urban Planning Committee, the ministry on 21 August 2025 designated all of Seoul, seven districts of Incheon and 23 cities and counties in Gyeonggi as land transaction permission zones for foreign nationals. From 26 August 2025, a foreign national buying a home in those zones needs to be able to live in it for two years after acquisition in order to obtain permission. Unlike earlier zones covering apartments only, this one covers detached, multi-household, multi-family, row houses and apartments alike. The initial designation ran for one year from 26 August 2025 and was extended by another year in August 2026. The ministry reported a sharp fall in foreign home purchases in the capital region after the designation.