Yeouido asks crack: Korea's Aug. 3 tax overhaul is reaching owners, not just sentiment

Divide asking price by floor area and the pressure lands somewhere counterintuitive. The 156 square meter unit at Shibeom, asking 4 billion won, works out at roughly 25.6 million won per square meter ^[4][1]. The 74 square meter unit at Sujeong, now asking 2.45 billion won after a cut from 2.59 billion, comes to about 33.1 million ^[13][3]. Cheap floor area sits in the big units. Agents in Yeouido-dong say the big units are where the older owners are, while younger buyers went into the small ones, and that the system is built so the larger and dearer the home, the heavier the tax ^[8]. The schedule therefore presses hardest on the holders of the least valuable square meters, some of whom, according to one brokerage, are barely covering living expenses ^[8].

Measured against what these buildings have already done, the markdowns are modest. Shibeom's ask is 100 million won below the 4.1 billion that comparable units traded at during the distressed wave that ran until the May 9 expiry of the suspended capital gains tax on multiple-home owners, about 2.4 percent ^[4][6]. Sujeong's reduction is 5.4 percent off its own previous ask ^[13][5]. Brokerage D says the units being marked down are precisely those whose sellers cannot meet the ten-year ownership and five-year residence test, and that full payment must clear before the association's September approval ^[14]. That is a settlement date a buyer can count backwards from, and it is a different pricing force than a tax bill. It also matters for anyone reading Yeouido as a tax indicator: the deadline sellers have to clear by September whatever the tax does, while owners squeezed only by the tax have no date at all and can sit.

The supply is not large either. Brokerage A near Shibeom says four or five listings have appeared since the overhaul was announced, and that transfer restrictions mean few units can reach the market even when owners want out ^[3]. Asil counted 732 apartment listings in Yeouido-dong on the 23rd ^[15], so the new arrivals are under one percent of what was already standing ^[8]. Thin, but it is behaviour rather than mood: owners are naming lower numbers on paper, and Sedaily's account has non-resident owners walking into a position where the tax rises while the exit is closed ^[16]. Sentiment surveys cannot show that. Cut asks at a complex two years from any relocation bill can.