Redevelopment will displace 3.4 households for every new apartment in Seoul's southwest next year

Seoul's citywide surplus, 3,285 more new homes than relocating households ^[12], is smaller than the southeast's surplus alone, 5,124 ^[13]. Outside the four southeastern districts, the city has 8,685 new units for 10,524 relocating households ^[19]. The southwest takes about 41.7% of next year's relocations and 9.9% of the city's new apartments ^[18]. The districts left out of the three zones hold the remaining 3,112 units against 316 relocations ^[17].

We think the gap is mostly about timing: the southwest is at the move-out stage of a cycle the southeast is finishing. The southeast is dense with high-priced homes and has seen active supply through reconstruction ^[4]. The southwest is among the mid- and lower-priced areas where redevelopment had been less active until now ^[6]. The count also covers only complexes of 30 or more households and leaves out youth housing ^[2]. Smaller buildings that might take in some of the displaced are therefore not part of the 1,651 ^[5].

The ratio could still overstate the pressure on Seoul's own rental market, mainly because many households leave the city. "Prices in Seoul are such a burden that most people move to Gyeonggi Province and live on jeonse (a lump-sum deposit lease) there before coming back into Seoul. Only about 30% to 40% of people stay in Seoul," an official with the redevelopment association for the Yeongdeungpo 1-11 district said ^[9]. Applied across the southwest, that rate leaves 1,681 to 2,242 households looking for a lease in Seoul ^[20]. That is 1.0 to 1.4 households per new unit ^[21].

There are two smaller offsets. The 5,604 is a forecast for next year ^[5], so any project that moves its relocation date shifts households into another year. Households could also cross into the southeast, where the surplus sits among high-priced homes ^[4]. The case against the offsets is that the 30-40% figure is one official describing one district. If more households stay, the ratio drifts back toward 3.4.

This year's deposit data already put the northeast ahead of the southwest ^[8], even though the northeast's relocation gap is far narrower ^[7]. Its move-outs have begun. At the Wolgye Dongsin complex in Nowon, where relocation is under way, an association official said: "The biggest problem is that there are no listings at all, even as jeonse and monthly rents rise quickly. The range of choices itself is narrow." ^[10] Yeongdeungpo 1-11 moves out next year ^[9].

In our view the southwest follows the northeast's pattern next year, with deposits rising faster than this year's 7.50% ^[8] and part of the demand going to Gyeonggi Province ^[9]. If southwestern deposits instead rise more slowly than that while relocations go ahead on schedule, we are wrong.

Shin Bo-yeon, a professor of real estate AI convergence at Sejong University, said: "Because redevelopment relocation demand will continue going forward, rental measures to address it must be prepared alongside. Only when public housing supply backs it up can redevelopment projects proceed without disruption." ^[11] The report does not describe any rental or public-housing measure aimed at the southwest.