“Effective from August 1, eased subscription requirements will swing JTYK’s doors wide open”

- Subscription requirements have been eased from “both of the spouses aged 60 or above” to “only the registered housing owners being 60 years or older”

- In the case of married couples jointly owning their housing, they are now eligible for JTYK subscription if the older spouses are older than 60

Starting August 1, it gets easier to join the JooTaekYeonKeum (JTYK) scheme. Any households with the registered owners aged 60 or older can subscribe to the reverse mortgage loan. In the case of married couples jointly owning their housing, they are now eligible for JTYK subscription if the older spouses are older than 60.

* JTYK is an instrument for households owning a single home worth less than 900 million won (applied to both of the spouses) to use their housings as collateral and receive pension benefits for the rest of their lives.

On July 30, the Korea Housing Finance Corporation (KHFC, CEO Seo Jong-dae) announced the easing of requirements for JTYK subscription. Previously, both the husband and the wife of an elderly household had to be 60 or older to be eligible for JTYK, but now households whose registered housing owners are aged 60 or above can join the scheme. The requirement for housings owned jointly by married couples has also been loosened—from “both the owners aged 60 or above” to “the older spouse being 60 years or older.” In this case, however, the amount of pension benefits will be calculated with the younger spouse as the basis, as has been the case in the past.

These changes, HF expects, will give around 1.4 million more people access to JTYK, given there are 939,000 house-owning families whose householders are aged 60-64 and that their spouses are also in similar age groups in 72.3% of these households. According to the statistics from Statistics Korea (KOSTAT), the male spouses of elderly couples in their sixties or above are 4.7 years older than their female counterparts on average. For this reason, these households had not been able to join the JTYK program until the husbands reached about 65 years of age.

Launched on June 3, the Early-Subscription JTYK also applies a lower minimum age for subscription, allowing households whose registered home owners are aged 50 or above to join the JTYK program and repay the mortgage loans on their existing housing with lump-sum payments. If they have any amount left out of their housing pension, they will receive monthly benefits throughout their lives—starting from the first month of subscription after their registered home owners turn 60.

* The Early-Subscription JTYK is a support scheme for the “house poor” struggling to repay the principal and interest on their mortgage loans. For those over 50 owning a single home worth less than 600 million won, it offers lump-sum drawings up to 100% of their maximum pension benefits so they can repay their existing mortgage loans and remain for the rest of their lives in their respective housings.

“With the eased requirements for JTYK subscription, a greater number of senior citizens can now stay in their own homes and stably receive pension benefits each month until the last days of their lives,” explained HF CEO Seo Jong-dae. “We will continue to improve the scheme so the elderly population can subscribe to JTYK more easily.”