7 Years Since Occupancy, Hanam Misa District Remains Empty... New Town 'Commercial Vacancy' Persists

Half of Over 4,000 Commercial Spaces Vacant
Chronic Issues in New Towns Like Wirye and Dasan
Oversupply Compared to Demand Causes Problem

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jun-yi] "With it being this empty, will people really come?"

A restaurant near Misa Station on Subway Line 5 in Hanam-si, Gyeonggi Province. The owner, Mr. Lee (62), pointed to a commercial building with a notice saying 'For Lease Inquiries.' He added, "Even as time passes, I don't think all the vacant stores will be filled."

The commercial buildings along the main road in front of Misa Station that the reporter recently visited were lined with vacant stores. The area around Misa Station is the center of Hanam Misagangbyeon City, a large-scale new town with about 38,000 households. Signs advertising leases were posted throughout the buildings. On that day, all 10 commercial buildings within a 500m radius of Misa Station were 50-70% vacant. Even Building A, completed three years ago and located right in front of Misa Station, had an occupancy rate below 50%.

Misa District, where apartment move-ins began in 2014, has seen a sharp rise in housing prices since the opening of Misa Station last year. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's Real Transaction Price Disclosure System, the 84㎡ (exclusive area) unit of 'Misagangbyeon Prugio' in Mangwol-dong within the district surged by 27% last year. Currently, the average sale price for apartments of this size is around 1.1 to 1.2 billion KRW.

However, the commercial market tells a different story. Hong Seok-won, head of Hong & Lee Real Estate Agency in the area, said, "Out of about 4,000 leasable commercial spaces in the district's central commercial area, about half are vacant," adding, "Store owners are lowering rents to attract tenants."

Apartment and commercial buildings are being constructed near Misa Station in Hanam-si, Gyeonggi-do.

This phenomenon is a common concern faced by major new towns across the Seoul metropolitan area. Other second-phase new towns like Wirye New Town and Dasan New Town in Namyangju are also reported to have commercial vacancy rates ranging from 30% to as high as 50%.

Experts say that the large-scale commercial vacancies in new towns are caused by oversupply without considering demand. While offline commercial demand is decreasing due to changes such as online shopping and the increase of nuclear families, actual demand is not reflected in the supply of commercial spaces. Professor Cho Joo-hyun of Konkuk University's Department of Real Estate explained, "This problem arises because developers in the new town development process did not properly analyze floating population or commercial usage rates and increased the proportion of commercial land with high land prices to secure profits."

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