Housing prices force 1.74 mil. residents to leave Seoul

Seoul’s net population has dropped by 861,000 over the past decade, due mostly to factors related to the metropolitan city’s skyrocketing housing prices.

According to data compiled by Statistics Korea, the number of people that moved out of Seoul over the past 10 years to other cities or provinces, including Busan, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, stood at approximately 5.47 million. As the number of people moving into the capital amounted to 4.61 million during the same period, Seoul witnessed a net outflow of some 861,000 people during the last decade.

It is the biggest net outflow posted among 10 cities and provinces during the period.

The main reason behind the migration turns out to be housing, with about 1.74 million people citing it as their primary reason for leaving Seoul according to Statistics Korea. Specifically, this means that they decided to move out of the city after purchasing housing elsewhere, or their lease contracts expired and they found a new place of residence outside of the city.

According to the Korea Real Estate Board (REB), the average transactional price for an apartment in Seoul from January to November last year stood at 13.98 million won ($10,493) per square meter, meaning that about 1.15 billion won is necessary to get a 82-square-meter apartment. The average price is more than double what it costs to purchase a place of the same size in Gyeonggi Province or Incheon.

Data from the real estate portal R114 showed that Seoul’s apartment prices soared by 144 percent during the past 10 years on average. When compared to the national average increase of 107 percent during the same period, Seoul’s increase is 37 percentage points higher.