Multi-Family vs Multi-Household
vs Urban-Living Housing

Same Exterior, Different Law

The four-to-five-story villas seen around a neighborhood are indistinguishable by appearance alone. But open the registry and they are entirely different buildings. Some are owned in whole by one person; others have a different owner for each unit. This difference is precisely the boundary between multi-family (Dagagu) and multi-household (Dasedae) housing, and it governs everything from construction standards to taxes, loans, and exit strategy.

Which Should You Choose?

The criterion is your exit strategy. If you intend to hold the whole building and manage rental income, multi-family is simpler. A single registration keeps management and disposal clean, and there are brackets where it helps maintain single-homeowner status. Conversely, if you plan to sell units individually or dispose of only part, you need sectional ownership through multi-household or urban-living housing.

From a design standpoint, the floor combination is key. Multi-family housing, constrained by the three-residential-floor limit, commonly uses a standard configuration of ground-floor pilotis parking plus three upper floors. Here, parking count, daylight setback, and floor limit interlock to determine the massing. Our ongoing Yongin multi-family project was likewise a search for the intersection of these three conditions. Daylight setback is covered in detail in a separate article.