'2030 Yeongkkeuljok' Flock to Incheon and Gyeonggi... "More Worried About Next Year"

Highest Nationwide Increase in Officially Announced Property Prices

With the public disclosure of the official prices of multi-family housing as of 2022, opposition from homeowners who checked these prices is spreading. This sentiment is particularly strong in the Incheon and Gyeonggi regions, where the ‘2030 Yeongkkeuljok’ (young buyers in their 20s and 30s who leveraged all their assets) have driven up housing prices significantly through speculative buying.

On the morning of the 24th, the Incheon regional board of a major domestic real estate community was flooded with complaints about the sharply increased official prices compared to last year. One resident wrote, "Although the property tax for this year is applied based on the 2020 official price, won’t the increase for two years be reflected all at once next year?" and added, "The temporary relief measures are just a shell game." Another lamented, "After being pushed out of Seoul due to skyrocketing jeonse (lease deposit) prices, I barely managed to buy an apartment in Incheon, but now I have to bear the fear of rising official prices."

According to the 2022 official prices of multi-family housing announced by the government the day before, among the 17 cities and provinces nationwide, Incheon’s official prices rose by 29.33% compared to last year, the highest increase in the country. This is more than double last year’s increase rate of 13.60%. Gyeonggi Province also recorded the second highest increase rate at 23.20%. This is due to the positive impact of the metropolitan area express railroad (GTX). Apartment prices in Yeonsu-gu, where Incheon Songdo New Town connected by the GTX-B line is located, surged by 38.46%.

Incheon and Gyeonggi share the commonality of being regions where the 2030 Yeongkkeuljok’s speculative buying was concentrated last year. Following the surge in Seoul apartment prices and tightening loan regulations that made purchasing difficult, their ‘panic buying’ shifted to the outskirts of Seoul, such as Incheon and Gyeonggi. The proportion of apartment purchases by those under 30, which was typically around 20-30% in Incheon, steadily rose to 51.5% in September last year. This means half of the new buyers were under 30. Gyeonggi also recorded its highest point of the year at 38.9% as of September.

The 2030 Yeongkkeuljok are facing a double burden from the increased tax burden due to rising official prices and the interest burden caused by rising interest rates. In fact, when looking at individual complexes, some in the Incheon and Gyeonggi areas have seen official price increases of over 50-70%. The official price of an 84㎡ unit in Songdo The Sharp Park Avenue rose from 614 million KRW last year to 976 million KRW this year, an increase of about 59% (320 million KRW). According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s simulated analysis of property tax changes by price range, the property tax for a single household in these homes jumps from around 800,000 to 900,000 KRW in 2021 to about 2.5 million KRW in 2022 (without applying the temporary deferral). In Gyeonggi, some areas saw increases exceeding 70%. The official price of an 84㎡ unit in Wolgot 2nd Complex, Punglim I-One, Wolgot-dong, Siheung-si, rose from 203 million KRW last year to 350 million KRW this year, an increase of 147 million KRW, or 72.4%. The official price of a 59.95㎡ unit in the same complex also rose sharply from 167 million KRW last year to 280 million KRW this year, a 67.7% increase.

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