Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
First-time buyers in their 30s drove more than a quarter of Seoul's August apartment registrations
Seoul's first-time buyers passed half of all apartment sale registrations in August for the first time since 2010, and the buyer doing it is typically in their 30s. In the rental market, deposits keep climbing.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- First-time purchase registrations for Seoul condominium-type buildings hit 9,343 last month, 53.8% of all 17,371 sale registrations and the highest share since the Supreme Court series began in January 2010.
- Buyers in their 30s made 4,855 of those first purchases, 52% of the total and more than double the 2,419 registered by buyers in their 40s.
- First-time purchases in Seoul over the first eight months of the year totalled 57,416, up 44.5% from 39,728 in the same period last year.
- Zippum's registration analysis puts the rise in owners in their 30s at 12.71% in Dongjak, 9.81% in Nowon and 9.73% in Gangdong, with declines of 2.01% in Gangnam and 1.29% in Seocho.
- The average jeonse deposit on a Seoul apartment passed 700 million won for the first time last month, and average monthly rent rose 14% from a year earlier to 1.62 million won.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- exposure About 28% of the month's 17,371 registrations were a first purchase by someone in their 30s, so the households setting clearing prices in Seoul's mid-priced stock have barely begun to accumulate equity.
- constraint Roughly 54% of this year's 57,416 first-time purchases came from a single ten-year age band, so Seoul's transaction volume now depends on the borrowing capacity of one cohort.
- decision en.sedaily.com reports that mid- and low-priced homes carry a lighter burden from taxes and lending rules. Any tightening there becomes a decision about whether the marginal Seoul bid stays.
The unit behind the record is specific. At one 700-unit Seoul complex, six households in a single building changed hands this year; all six buyers were in their 30s and born in the 1990s, and each bought 59 square meters of exclusive floor area at an average 1.04 billion won [5]. That is about 17.6 million won per square meter [3]. A renter converting the average Seoul jeonse deposit into ownership at that price has to fund roughly 340 million won more [4]. The Supreme Court registry counts registrations, and it does not record how much of that was borrowed [15].
Buying ran far ahead of the change in the stock of owners. The property app Zippum counted 323,921 owners in their 30s in Seoul condominium-type buildings in August, up 15,707 from 308,214 a year earlier, a 5.1% rise against 1.18% for owners of all ages [9]. Roughly 31,000 people in their 30s bought a first home in Seoul between January and August, the most in seven years and more than in 2020 or 2021 [7]. Eight months of first purchases by that cohort therefore ran close to twice its twelve-month net gain in ownership [6]. The rest is owners leaving the bracket, by selling or by turning 40.
The timing follows the rental market. In eight outlying districts of Seoul, jeonse listings fell to 940 at the end of April from 2,298 in January, a loss of 1,358 listings, or 59.1% [12][8]. According to en.sedaily.com, non-homeowners looking for a place to live are moving to buy before it becomes even more difficult [13]. August's first purchases were 16.7% above July's 8,006, the highest monthly count since August 2020 [3].
Buyers in their 30s concentrated on Dongjak, Nowon, Gangdong, Yeongdeungpo and Seongbuk [8]. In my view that pattern is substitution: the rental option shrank, and the cheapest qualifying purchase absorbed the demand. Two other readings survive the data. The cohort may simply have been pulled forward, in which case an increase of 17,688 first purchases in eight months [5] borrows from next year once deposit supply returns; or the more interesting version, that the tax and lending rules have relocated leverage from expensive districts to cheap ones without reducing the amount of it. What would break the substitution reading is first-time buyers moving up-market while the prices they pay climb. That would be leverage chasing appreciation.
What to watch
- Whether the first-time share holds above half when the September registry data lands.
- Any recovery in jeonse listings in Seoul's outer districts. That is the test of the substitution reading.
- Changes to the tax and lending treatment of mid- and low-priced homes.