Jeju's unsold-home backlog grew about twenty times faster than the nation's over three months

Work back from the ministry's count and Jeju began May with about 2,700 unsold homes, since the 603 units added over the three months to July were a 22.3% rise on that base ^[1]. The July increase alone was about 65% of the three-month build ^[2].

The price side barely moved. The island's average presale price for privately built apartments was 25.74 million won per 3.3 square meters in late 2023, when buying by mainland residents had already begun to falter. The February 2025 figure was about 1.5% higher ^[7][6][4]. That late-2023 number sat 48% above the national average ^[7], so the national figure was near 17.4 million won per 3.3 square meters ^[5].

One Aewol complex of 425 units, finished less than a year ago, had sold a single unit before the rest of the inventory was put up for public auction in its entirety ^[13]. The 424 units left in that block are equivalent to about 18% of the island's finished unsold stock ^[6].

The buyers who are missing are off-island Koreans. Purchases by buyers from outside Jeju fell 34.5% in 2023, to 1,498 ^[9]. Visitors did not fall the way buyers did. Domestic arrivals were down 6.4% in the first half while foreign arrivals rose 31.9% ^[10]. Domestic seat capacity to and from the island fell by about 370,000 seats, or 5%, as carriers moved aircraft to more profitable international routes ^[11]. Card spending by Korean consumers on Jeju started falling in April ^[12].

Renting the units out instead is not obviously easier. Jeonse and monthly-rent transactions totaled 2,403 in July, down 11.2% from 2,705 a year earlier. Sales transactions fell 4.2% over the same period ^[16]. That makes the lease market's contraction about 2.7 times the sales market's ^[7].

It could be that prices on the island are sticky and the backlog keeps building until sellers give way, in which case the record count is the early part of a longer adjustment. It could also be that the adjustment is already happening project by project, and the price benchmark is too old to show it. A third possibility is completion timing: 939 of the unsold units were not yet finished at the end of July ^[9], and each one that completes moves into the finished-and-empty column without any new sale failing. I would expect the next Jeju presale average to print lower. The backlog has grown about 26% from the 2,621 units recorded as of August last year, when towns and rural districts already held 56.8% of them ^[8][15]. A count that falls back below 3,000 with the presale average intact would show I am wrong.

en.sedaily.com reported that heavy tourist traffic alone is not enough to assume solid demand for home purchases. The same report said presale prices and the structure of new supply need to be adjusted to match demand from owner-occupiers and renters ^[18].