Less than 1 in 4 Seoul apartment deals are under W600m

Housing prices keep soaring in Seoul, as a report showed Wednesday that only 23.5 percent of high-rise apartments sold in the first quarter of this year went for less than 600 million won ($440,000).

The real estate news platform Gyeongjae Man Lab -- Economy 10,000-Lab -- analyzed the data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It found that 2,188 of the 9,314 high-rise apartment transaction deals in the first quarter involved apartments worth less than 600 million won.

It was the lowest percentage for the quarter since the ministry started tallying the figure in 2006.

The percentage of deals of apartments in that price range in Q1 had peaked at 95.3 percent back in 2007.

Apartment deals for between 900 million won and 1.5 billion won accounted for the largest share, at 30.8 percent of all deals in the quarter, followed by transactions for amounts between 600 million won and 900 million won, which accounted for 27.6 percent.

Sales of apartments worth over 1.5 billion won made up 18.1 percent of all deals, the highest ever. Sales in this range only accounted for 0.3 percent in 2007.

Dobong-gu had the highest proportion of apartment sales in the lowest price range, accounting for 77.9 percent of all deals in the district. In Seocho-gu, southern Seoul, 73.4 percent of all apartments sold cost at least 1.5 billion won.

Only 37.1 percent of apartment deals in the lowest price range took place in the regions below the Han River, which includes the relatively wealthy districts such as Gangnam-gu, Songpa-gu, and Seocho-gu.

A Statistics Korea report in December showed the average assets held by a South Korean household to be 527.3 million won in 2023.