7 in 8 Non-Apartment Rental Transactions Outside Seoul Metropolitan Area Are Monthly

Analysis of Lease Types in September Housing Statistics from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport

Monthly rent, including rentals with a deposit and semi-jeonse, accounted for nearly 70% of residential lease transactions reported in September. The share of monthly rentals appears to be steadily rising.

According to September housing statistics released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on October 30, there were 196,210 residential lease transactions nationwide in September. Of these, 136,728 were monthly rentals and 59,482 were jeonse leases, putting the share of monthly rentals at 69.7%. Compared with the average for the same month over the past five years, jeonse transactions fell 33.0%, while monthly rentals increased 21.3%.

The trend is even clearer when broken down by region and housing type. From January to September this year, monthly rentals accounted for 52.4% of apartment lease transactions in the Seoul metropolitan area, up 6.4 percentage points from the same period last year. For non-apartment housing in the Seoul metropolitan area, the share rose to 77.5% this year from 73.1% over the same period last year.

Monthly rentals accounted for 87.6% of lease transactions for non-apartment housing outside the Seoul metropolitan area. In other words, roughly seven out of every eight transactions were monthly rentals. The share for January to September had only just topped half, at 51.8%, as recently as 2022, but has continued to rise since then.

A neighborhood in Seoul densely packed with villas. Yonhap News

The trend is attributed to several factors: continued avoidance of jeonse amid concerns about landlords failing to return deposits, including in jeonse fraud cases; changes in household structures, such as the increase in single-person households; and landlords' preference for stable income. Last month, home sales totaled 48,997, down 22.7% from the same period last year. Cumulatively, sales from January to September reached 558,615, up 4.6% year over year.

Meanwhile, housing permits in the Seoul metropolitan area totaled 17,620 units last month, down 15.2% from the same period last year. In other regions, permits totaled 8,318 units, a 68.9% decline over the same period. Housing starts fell 43.3% year over year to 19,308 units in the Seoul metropolitan area and 50.2% to 6,738 units outside the metropolitan area.

Last month, 6,508 units were put up for sale in the Seoul metropolitan area, including apartment complexes that received approval to recruit residents, down 47.7% from the same period last year. In contrast, the number of units put up for sale in other regions rose 26.4% to 13,243. Completions increased 9.4% in the Seoul metropolitan area, while falling 35.0% outside it. At the end of September, there were 65,941 unsold homes, down 4.6% from a month earlier. The number of unsold homes completed and awaiting sale fell 1.9% over the same period to 27,549.

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