Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Northeast and southwest Seoul account for 72% of the city's lost jeonse listings
Seoul apartment jeonse listings fell 16.7% in a year to 19,853, with the cheaper northeast and southwest accounting for about 72% of the 3,979 lost. Whether owner-occupancy rules or falling completions removed them decides how much stock easing the rules would bring back.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Renewals made up 50.8% of Seoul apartment jeonse contracts signed from January to August, up from 27.2% in 2023, according to transport ministry transaction data.
- Total Seoul apartment jeonse contracts through August fell 25.7% from a year earlier, with new contracts down 38%.
- Monthly-rent listings shrank alongside jeonse, falling to 16,406 from 19,480 over the year on the Asil platform.
- The Korea Real Estate Board's median Seoul apartment jeonse price reached 560 million won in August, up 12.4% and level with the series high set in January 2022.
- Forecasts cited by the Seoul Economic Daily have move-ins falling by about 3,400 units next year and 10,000 the year after, compared with this year.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Tenants leaving jeonse are signing monthly-rent leases from a pool that is also shrinking, so the switch relieves one market by drawing down the other.
- exposure Renewing tenants who hold back the renewal right sign this round's increase without the legal 5% ceiling, leaving that price to negotiation with the landlord.
- decision Easing permit-zone occupancy rules is the cheapest lever on offer, and it returns stock only if those rules, and not thinning completions, are what took listings off the market.
- cost Tenants in the cheaper northeast and southwest carry most of the squeeze, and the regions that held steady did so on one-off completions that the falling move-in forecast will not repeat.
On the ministry's own totals, the doubling of the jeonse renewal share since 2023 mostly measures new leases disappearing [1][2]. Working back from the 38% fall in new contracts and the 25.7% fall in the total, renewals were about 41% of last year's contracts, and their number fell by roughly 8% this year [1]. Monthly rent is where staying put grew in absolute terms, with renewals up 22.5% [4].
Tenants who do renew are holding back their legal protection. The renewal request right caps increases at 5%. The share of jeonse renewals invoking it fell to 53.3% from 56.7%, and for monthly rent it fell to 30.3% from 37.2% [5]. Industry participants cited by the Seoul Economic Daily take this to mean tenants are re-contracting by agreement with landlords and saving the right for later [6]. A renewal signed that way is not held to the 5% cap [2].
According to the Seoul Economic Daily, rules that treat jeonse loans as a key driver of home prices have sped the move from jeonse to monthly rent [10]. Listings of both kinds fell together, with 3,074 monthly-rent listings gone beside 3,979 jeonse listings [4][3][9]. The shift appears in signed contracts instead. Running the same ratios on monthly rent, where renewals rose to 39.7% of contracts from 31.8%, new monthly-rent leases fell about 13%, against 38% for new jeonse [3][5]. The same working puts total monthly-rent deals down about 2%, close to the slight decline the report describes [4][5].
The report blames the listings squeeze on mandatory owner occupancy layered on rules aimed at multiple-home owners and registered rental businesses, with move-ins falling since last year on top [11]. The regional split is the best test the figures allow. The northeast, covering Nowon, Dobong and Dongdaemun, lost 1,869 jeonse listings, or 43.2%, and the southwest, covering Guro, Geumcheon and Gwanak, lost 991 [12][13]. Together that is 2,860, about 72% of the citywide loss [6]. Only the southeast and northwest held steady. They are where DH Bangbae in Seocho (3,064 units) and Hillstate Medialle in Eunpyeong (2,451 units) were completed this year [14]. Those two complexes hold 5,515 units, more than the 3,979 jeonse listings the whole city lost [7].
If owner occupancy is the binding constraint, easing it frees stock quickly. Yoon Su-min, a real estate specialist at NH NongHyup Bank, said easing the rules in land transaction permit zones alone, which force landlords to move in themselves, would let listings now tied up for sale flow into the rental market [17]. If completions bind instead, easing moves few units, and the forecast decline in move-ins over the next two years sets the path [16]. Both can be true at once, with the rules pulling stock everywhere and new complexes offsetting them only where they open.
I think completions explain more of the regional pattern than the rules do, because the two regions that held are the two that got large new complexes [14]. The counter-case is the combined reading, and it fits the same numbers. The report does not break listings down by permit zone. If listings inside those zones fell no faster than outside them, the occupancy thesis is wrong.
What to watch
- Whether the government eases owner-occupancy requirements in land transaction permit zones, and whether listings in those districts recover within a quarter afterward.
- September transaction data showing whether new jeonse contracts keep falling faster than new monthly-rent contracts.
- A September Korea Real Estate Board median above 560 million won would set a new series high for Seoul apartment jeonse.