Sinchon, Yonsei & Yeonhui-dong

Around Sinchon station: one-rooms, officetels and guesthouses stacked on top of first-floor restaurants. The classic calls are a toilet blocked the week before exams, a shared stack backing up into the lowest unit, and kitchen lines downstairs pushing grease smells upstairs. Language-exchange students and exchange-semester tenants often have no idea who their landlord even is — the realtor booked everything. We are used to that: we document the cause and hand you something you can forward.

Up in Yeonhui-dong: low-rise houses and villas with gardens, many of them decades old, housing professors, diplomats and international-school families. The problems here are house problems — exterior drains that fill with leaves every autumn, long private pipe runs, aging bathrooms worth repairing properly, and the occasional hidden leak that shows up as a water bill. Quiet, careful work with shoe covers is the default, and we photograph everything for owners who are abroad half the year.

• Student one-rooms: shared stacks, improvised bathroom additions, deposit worries — know who pays before you pay.
• Guesthouses and shares: turnover-day emergencies and "which tenant caused it?" disputes our camera footage settles.
• Yeonhui family homes: garden and terrace drains, leak detection across large floors, fixture work done once and done right.