주택임대차 법제에 대한 비교법적 고찰 - 미국과 일본과의 비교를 중심으로 -

In order to ensure the stability of people's residential life, Korea has enacted and enforced the Housing Lease Protection Act as a special law of the Civil Code. In addition, special laws such as the Special Act on Public Housing and the Special Act on Private Rental Housing have also been enacted and operated to protect the residential lives of socially vulnerable people. However, the need for protection for renters who need more protection in housing compared to landlords has been continuously raised, and in 2020, as rent prices skyrocketed and the living conditions of renters became unstable, the Housing Rental Protection Act was amended by introducing the right to renew the contract, a cap on the monthly rent, and a rental report system. Since the amendment, the use of the right to renew the contract has been consistently effective, reaching about 60% in July 2022, but it has been pointed out that it is still insufficient to protect tenants. In addition, with the introduction of the Rent Act 3, there are many restrictions on the exercise of landlords' property rights due to the 5% rent cap and the exercise of tenants' right to request a contract renewal, leading to opposing opinions that the Residential Lease Protection Act should be relaxed. In this situation, it is necessary to compare the residential lease laws with those of other developed countries to find out whether the current Korean residential lease protection laws are sufficient to protect tenants and whether there are any improvements to ensure the rights of landlords. This paper examines the main contents of each state's residential lease protection system in the United States and Japan's residential lease protection law, the Rent Act, and draws the following conclusions through a comparative analysis with the Rent Act 3, which was introduced in 2020. First, the U.S. and Japan strongly protect the continuation of lease contracts in the absence of a justifiable reason. Therefore, it is necessary to extend the duration of the lease contract under the Residential Lease Protection Act, which is currently guaranteed for a total of four years by exercising the right to renew the lease for a period of two years and one renewal request. Secondly, if the duration of the lease contract under the Residential Lease Protection Act is extended to a longer period, the landlord's exercise of property rights will be further restricted, so as a mitigation measure, it is necessary to cap the rate of rent increase at the 12-month average change in the consumer price index plus 5%, but to cap it at 10% of the existing rent.