Korea Appraisal Board Cannot Be Trusted on Official Prices... Over 5,000 Adjustments Annually

Correction of Official Prices for Apartment Complexes: "1,346 Cases in 2016, 1,045 in 2017, 5,740 in 2018, 5,313 Last Year"
Main Reasons Include Neglect in Reflecting Price Factors Such as Floor, Direction, View, and Duplicate Reflections

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Hyung-kwon] It has been revealed that the Korea Appraisal Board has been neglecting or carelessly handling the task of calculating publicly announced prices, resulting in large-scale corrections and re-announcements of these prices.

According to data submitted by the Korea Appraisal Board to Kim Hoe-jae, a member of the National Assembly Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea (Yeosu-eul, Jeonnam), the number of apartment units with corrected public prices after the initial announcement increased to 1,346 units in 2016, 1,045 units in 2017, 5,740 units in 2018, and 5,313 units last year.

Among these corrections, a significant portion involved adjusting prices of apartments where objections were filed. It was found that the Korea Appraisal Board did not properly reflect price formation factors such as floor level, direction, and view, leading to multiple units being corrected together.

The number of units adjusted due to objections was 26 in 2016, 39 in 2017, 168 in 2018, and 138 in 2019, but the number of related units corrected alongside these was 1,320 in 2016, 1,006 in 2017, 5,572 in 2018, and 5,175 in 2019, amounting to 30 to 50 times more.

This year alone, one objection led to corrections for 569 units, and last year, three objections resulted in corrections for 349 units.

In the case of an apartment in Seongsu-dong, where 230 units had their publicly announced land prices corrected last year due to failure to reflect price differences by floor and view, eight adjustment opinions related to this issue were submitted during the pre-announcement opinion hearing process. However, the Korea Appraisal Board announced the prices as appropriate without thoroughly verifying these opinions. An internal audit also revealed that during the review committee’s verification process, the data was not properly examined due to its volume, indicating a formalistic approach to the task.

Additionally, it was discovered that during the opinion hearing period, the price difference for view rights was applied redundantly, resulting in the publicly announced price for a 59.64㎡ unit being 13 million KRW higher than that of a larger 72.85㎡ unit. This indicates that investigators and reviewers at the Korea Appraisal Board have been neglecting their investigation and verification duties.

Assemblyman Kim stated, “Publicly announced prices for apartments are used as a basis for taxation and other purposes, so fairness is paramount. With such handling of tasks, public trust cannot be earned.” He added, “Although the announcement process involves eight steps before final publication, these problems still occur. Therefore, it is necessary to review the entire system for investigating and calculating publicly announced land prices and prepare improvement measures.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.