Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Oh Se-hoon counts three more weeks of Seoul price gains than the Korea Real Estate Board
Seoul's mayor says apartment prices have risen for 86 straight weeks and the Korea Real Estate Board says 83, with the Moon-era record of 85 sitting between them, so whether the record has fallen depends on which weeks you count.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon wrote on Facebook on the 13th that city apartment prices have risen for 86 consecutive weeks, past the 85-week record set under the Moon Jae-in administration.
- The Korea Real Estate Board puts the run at 83 straight weeks of rising Seoul home prices, a shorter series than the one the mayor says has already broken the record.
- The three-week difference comes from holidays, because the 86 weeks Oh cites include periods covering last year's Chuseok and this year's Lunar New Year.
- Oh said Seoul apartments rose 3.5% on average from June through August, with Dongdaemun-gu up 5.8%, Geumcheon-gu 5.4%, Dobong, Gangseo and Gangdong 4.7% each and Nowon 4.3%.
- He accused the government of wishful thinking for looking only at figures showing that price gains have slowed in parts of Gangnam.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- contradiction The two counts straddle the record, so the government can say the Moon-era run of 85 weeks still stands while the mayor says it has been beaten, and both are citing a weekly index.
- constraint Oh's displacement account limits what loan caps can deliver: tighten in the expensive centre and the demand turns up in Dongdaemun-gu and Geumcheon-gu instead.
- decision The government has to choose which front it defends, since easing loans adds demand in the districts already rising fastest and easing taxes concedes the mayor's point about single-home owners.
The gap between the two counts is three weeks, and it decides whether a record has fallen. Oh Se-hoon's 86 weeks clears the 85-week Moon-era mark by one; the board's 83 leaves that mark standing, two weeks away [14]. Whether holiday weeks belong in a weekly streak is a methodology question, and until someone settles it each side has a number to cite.
The intensity figures are harder to argue with than the week count. Oh said the cumulative first-year rise was "14.73% under the Lee Jae-myung government, far exceeding 11.68% under the Roh Moo-hyun government and 9.41% under the Moon Jae-in government" [5]. That is 5.32 points more than Moon's first year, about 1.57 times the pace [15].
The June-to-August numbers matter for what happens next. Sustained for four quarters, the 3.5% citywide gain compounds to about 15%, and Dongdaemun-gu's 5.8% to about 25% [16]. Oh called this a catch-up effect centered on Seoul's non-Gangnam and outlying districts [12].
His account of the cause is displacement, and he put it in one sentence. "When lending curbs suppressed demand, that demand was pushed out to lower- and mid-priced areas on the city's outskirts, ultimately driving up both sale prices and jeonse (a lump-sum deposit lease) prices in those areas at the same time," Oh said [7]. On that reading the loan caps pushed buyers out to the outskirts, and deposits in the receiving districts went up with sale prices [7].
What he asked for is a review: a "full review of the government's housing policy on all three fronts" of supply, lending and taxes [8]. "A housing policy driven consistently by blind faith in owner-occupancy and by the belief that taxes can solve everything has, far from reining in prices, only lifted the price floor across all of Seoul by one step," Oh said [13]. The government has not responded [17].
The government can point at the 83-week count and the slower Gangnam prints and hold the current mix; or it can loosen lending for buyers in the outlying districts, the smallest concession to the displacement argument and the one that adds demand where prices are already climbing fastest; or it can move on the property tax burden Oh raised for retirees who own a single home and worry about leaving neighborhoods they have lived in for decades [10]. I would expect lending to move before supply, because new units take years to reach a weekly index and Oh's own district figures point at the loan channel.
The test is the next two prints. If the board's series turns negative before it reaches 85, the run ends at 83 or 84, short of the Moon administration record [2][3].
What to watch
- Whether the Korea Real Estate Board addresses the holiday-week treatment that produces the 83 versus 86 split.
- The first concrete government move on supply, lending or taxes, and whether it comes with a defence of the 83-week count.
- September district prints for Dongdaemun-gu, Geumcheon-gu and Nowon-gu against the citywide average.