Real estate market emerges as top issue in South Korean election
In 30 years as a real estate broker, Chung Doo Hyun says, he has never seen a market behave the way the one in South Korea is behaving today.
First, there was the wave of feverish buying that drove housing prices up across the country, including in skyscraper-studded Seoul financial district, Yoido, where Chung’s tiny office is located. Then, about a year ago, buyers and sellers became scarce, he says. Real estate prices stopped moving. The entire market came to a near halt, as if someone had hit the pause button on a remote control.
“The whole real estate market is frozen,” Chung said. “Everyone is just waiting.”
It is an unusual predicament at a time when increasing volatility in real estate markets elsewhere has emerged as one of the biggest challenges to global growth. In the United States, a housing-market meltdown has strained the economy, shaken Wall Street and spread to Europe; while in fast-emerging China and India, runaway property values threaten to spur inflation or, worse yet, plummet.