Korea Real Estate Board Greatly Expands Apartment Price Statistics Sample... Enhancing Reliability

Sales information posted at a real estate office in Apgujeong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Jiwon] The Korea Real Estate Board has increased the sample size of apartments used in its housing price trend survey by more than three times. This was done to address criticisms that the statistics lacked reliability due to using smaller samples than private institutions.

The Real Estate Board announced on the 8th that "following the improvement plan for the housing price trend survey announced last December, external verification of the new statistics and approval of statistical changes by Statistics Korea have been completed." Results using the increased samples will be released starting this week for the weekly survey and from this month for the monthly survey.

There have been many criticisms, mainly from civic groups and the National Assembly, that the Real Estate Board's housing price trend survey uses fewer samples than the private institution KB Kookmin Bank, resulting in less reliable statistics. In fact, KB's weekly survey sample is about 34,000 households, while the Real Estate Board's was only 9,400 households. The Real Estate Board and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport prepared supplementary measures at the end of last year and reflected them in this year's budget.

The Real Estate Board's housing price trend survey is divided into weekly, monthly, and detailed surveys. The weekly survey sample was increased from 9,400 households to 32,000 households, a 3.4-fold increase, bringing it to a level similar to KB's. The comprehensive sample for the monthly survey increased from 28,360 households to 46,170 households, a 1.6-fold increase, and the monthly apartment sample doubled from 17,190 households to 35,000 households.

A Real Estate Board official explained, "Out of the 39,994 complexes nationwide, samples were previously extracted from 4,266 complexes, but now the number of complexes from which samples are drawn has increased to 16,955, allowing us to better capture market changes." In sample extraction, the criteria were expanded from just apartment size and year of completion to also include price distribution to better reflect reality.

However, for Seoul apartments with high transaction frequency, the existing sample-based sales and jeonse price surveys will be conducted in parallel for a certain period to monitor the improvement effects, and the results will be provided together. Son Taerak, president of the Real Estate Board, stated, "We will continue to promptly and accurately deliver various statistical information such as the housing price trend survey, actual transaction price index, and housing transaction status so that users can utilize diverse statistics in a multidimensional way according to their purposes."

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