Apartment Maintenance Fees Must Be Published by the Last Day of the Following Month — The Ten Line Items, the 50-Unit Threshold, and Miscellaneous Income

The maintenance fee is the sum of ten line items

Start with the vocabulary. The total printed on the bill is three different kinds of money added together. Of those, what the law calls the "maintenance fee" is the monthly sum of the ten items listed in Article 23(1) of the Enforcement Decree.

• General management · cleaning · security · disinfection · elevator maintenance
• Intelligent home network equipment maintenance · heating · hot water supply
• Repair and upkeep (including cleaning of cooling and heating equipment) · consigned management commission

If a name that is not on that list appears as a maintenance-fee item, that alone is worth querying. The detailed breakdown of each item is separately fixed in Appended Table 2 of the Enforcement Decree, so which cost belongs under which item is not something a manager can decide freely either.

The three largest of the ten are usually general management, security and cleaning. These are labour costs, so they rise when the minimum wage rises, and in complexes that outsource security and cleaning the unit price changes when the service contract is renewed. If your fees jumped in a single step one month, it is faster to check whether a service contract was renewed then than to look at consumption.

Some money must be collected "separately" from the maintenance fee

Article 23(2) of the Enforcement Decree requires two items to be collected separately from the maintenance fee: the long-term repair reserve and the cost of safety inspections. The long-term repair reserve differs even at the account level. Maintenance fees are deposited with a financial institution designated by the residents' representative council, but the long-term repair reserve must be deposited and managed in a separate account.

By its nature this money belongs to the owner. A tenant who paid it while living there gets it back on moving out. The settlement method is set out in the money you get back when you move out.

"Usage charges" are not maintenance fees

Electricity and water are not maintenance fees but usage charges. The management body collects them on residents' behalf and passes them to the power company or the waterworks office, which makes them a different kind of item. The Enforcement Decree lists ten.

Electricity, water, gas, heating and hot water in district-heating complexes, septic tank waste charges, household waste charges, insurance premiums covering the buildings in the complex as a whole, operating expenses of the residents' representative council, operating expenses of the election commission, and the television licence fee.

When fees spike in summer, this is usually the side that grew. If household electricity is the cause, the place to look is not the management office but the progressive rate structure.

The deadline is "the last day of the following month"

The management body must post the details of the fees it has billed in three places by the last day of the following month: the complex's website, the notice board in each building, and the Multi-Family Housing Management Information System (K-apt) operated by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

The conditions attached to publication matter. Heating and hot water charges, and electricity, water, gas and district heating and hot water, must include consumption volumes, and the long-term repair reserve must include its accrual rate and the amount spent. Miscellaneous income must be published the same way — proceeds from selling recyclables, fees for using welfare facilities, and the like. Posting the fees while leaving miscellaneous income out is not compliance.

What is published, however, is the itemised calculation, and per-household billing is excluded. You cannot see what your neighbour paid.

50 units and 100 units are the thresholds

A common misreading is "our complex is too small for this to apply." Even where a complex is not subject to mandatory management, if it has 50 or more units the manager must publish the fee details in the same way.

• 50 units or more — publish the monthly totals of the ten items, the long-term repair reserve, usage charges and miscellaneous income by the last day of the following month
• 50 or more but fewer than 100 units — usage charges may be published as a combined total rather than individually
• Fewer than 100 units — K-apt publication may be omitted (website and notice board publication remains)

So even a standalone block below 100 units still carries the publication duty once it passes 50.

Failing to publish, or publishing falsely, carries a fine

Breaching the duty is subject to an administrative fine of up to 3 million won under Article 102(4)3 of the Multi-Family Housing Management Act. That covers not only failing to publish but also publishing false information.

There is a separate inspection route on top of that. To verify whether fees published on K-apt are appropriate, the head of a local government may commission an inspection by bodies such as the multi-family housing management support agency, a regional multi-family housing management support centre, or the Korea Real Estate Board, and where the inspection finds the fees inappropriate, may recommend improvements to the residents' representative council and the management body. This is where the route runs before an individual takes anything on directly: file a complaint with the multi-family housing division of your city, county or district office.

Where repair and upkeep charges usually split

The item that actually generates disputes is repair and upkeep. Where a facility needing repair serves two or more households in common, the management body may repair it directly and bill the cost to the relevant residents separately. Leaking fixtures are included. Whether the problem is yours alone or belongs to a shared portion decides who pays. In a new building this may not be a maintenance-fee matter at all but a defect repair claim, so it is worth checking the order first.

Usage fees for shared facilities such as community rooms and hoists may be billed to users only. If they are being spread across every household regardless of use, you can ask for the basis.

What to check when the bill arrives

1. Split it into three blocks — maintenance fee / long-term repair reserve / usage charges — rather than reading the total. 2. If the increase is on the usage side, start with consumption; if it is the maintenance fee, find which item. 3. On K-apt (www.k-apt.go.kr), compare your complex's last 12 months and the average for nearby complexes. It should be posted by the last day of the following month. 4. If it is missing, or miscellaneous income has been left out, ask the management office for the basis, and if there is no answer, file a complaint with your local government's multi-family housing division. 5. For matters that follow a different procedure from fees, such as noise between floors, check the relevant standard separately.

This article is based on Articles 23 and 102 of the Multi-Family Housing Management Act and Article 23 of its Enforcement Decree, as of August 2026. Application may differ depending on the size of the complex and the management form (self-management or consigned management), and this article does not substitute for legal advice. Confirm whether an individual charge is appropriate with your management office and the multi-family housing division of your city, county or district office.