South Korea · KOR · snapshot 2026-10-06
South Korea
Measured
Currency movement
-4.3%
The local currency bought more euros at the end of this window than at the start — a more expensive entry for a euro-denominated buyer, and a better exit for anyone already holding the asset.
What it does not show. It is not a forecast and not a property return. A currency move and a price move are different facts and routinely point opposite ways; nothing here says which way either is going next.
Foreign-buyer rules
2 of 2 published rules apply
These are the restrictions a foreign buyer meets before price is even discussed — approval regimes, surcharges, ownership limits.
What it does not show. It is not a completeness claim. A rule we have not read is not a rule that does not exist, and this row counts what is cited, not what is in force.
Cost of money
2.75%
The price of money to banks in this jurisdiction, which sets the floor everything else is priced from.
What it does not show. It is emphatically not a mortgage quote. What a non-resident is offered is a different number, usually much higher, and the gap between them is where a market's financing story actually lives.
Supply against absorption
Not measured
No statistics agency for this market has been read and cleared for republication. Two have been anywhere: Canada and Singapore. The data very likely exists; the permission to publish it has not been established.
Residential price cycle
91.4 against a 2015 base of 100
House prices have risen more slowly than consumer prices since 2015, or fallen — the market is below its own inflation-adjusted level of that year.
What it does not show. It is a position, not a direction, and it is not a valuation. Deflating by consumer prices says nothing about what the asset yields or what credit costs, and a market can sit above its 2015 level for years without that meaning anything is due.
Valuation against its own history
47.7 to income, 106.2 to rent
The two ratios disagree about this market. Against household income it sits below its own 2015 and against rent it sits above, so housing here became cheaper by one measure and dearer by the other in the same window. That is a fact about the denominators — incomes and rents did not move together — and there is no third number that resolves it.
What it does not show. It is not comparable to another country's figure. Each index is 100 in its own 2015, so two of these side by side are two different base years wearing the same label — a market at 120 is not dearer than one at 90, it has merely moved further from its own past. It is also not a forecast, and a ratio can stay stretched for a decade.
On the market now
Not measured
No listings platform has been read for this market. The one platform this site can read covers Russian cities only, and inventing a count for anywhere else would be worse than an empty row.
No dossier has been written for this market yet. What follows is the measured layers and the rules, each with its source — not an argument about whether to be here. A market reaches this page as soon as two layers can be cited, because an unwritten thesis is a reason to publish less, not a reason to publish nothing.
The series behind those figures, and the workings
Currency
-4.3%
Twelve-month move in KRW per euro, 1634.3850 in 2025-09 to 1563.9177 in 2026-09. Positive means the local currency weakened. Source: European Central Bank monthly reference averages.
1508.6700
Latest daily fixing, KRW per euro on 2026-10-06. Shown because it is what a reader would see if they went and looked; the window above uses monthly averages, which one volatile day cannot move.
Against other base currencies
A market is cheap or dear relative to the capital entering it, so the same twelve months read differently depending on what the buyer holds. Both legs are quoted per euro, so the euro cancels and no third source is involved.
| Buyer holds | KRW per unit, 2025-09 | KRW per unit, 2026-09 | Twelve-month move |
|---|---|---|---|
| US dollar (USD) | 1393.0731 | 1358.3661 | -2.5% |
| Pound sterling (GBP) | 1880.8833 | 1822.4824 | -3.1% |
| Swiss franc (CHF) | 1748.0818 | 1658.4733 | -5.1% |
| Singapore dollar (SGD) | 1084.1365 | 1067.3882 | -1.5% |
| Australian dollar (AUD) | 918.4565 | 967.4198 | +5.3% |
Cost of money
2.75%
Central bank policy rate, 2026-07. Source: Bank for International Settlements.
This is the price of money to banks, not the price of money to a non-resident buying a building. The gap between those two is where a market’s financing story actually lives, and it is not in this number. A mortgage quote for a foreign buyer depends on the lender, the asset and the borrower, and no public dataset carries it.
BIS terms permit this figure on a free page and state that nothing in their statistics constitutes investment advice. They also allow inclusion in a commercial product only where it adds no charge, so this series is published here and is not priced into any paid work.
Background
Annual national statistics from the World Bank, under a licence that permits reuse with attribution. They describe the country; they do not time an entry, and they are not counted as measurements of this market — otherwise every territory on earth would claim to be measured on the strength of one dataset.
| Indicator | Value | Year |
|---|---|---|
| GDP per capita | 36,227 US$ | 2025 |
| Consumer price inflation | 2.1 % | 2025 |
| Population | 51,684,564 | 2025 |
| Urban population | 81.2 % of total | 2025 |
| Official exchange rate | 1,422.4408 per US$ | 2025 |
What the rules do to a foreign buyer
Each entry cites the instrument and the authority page it was read from, with the date it was retrieved. Facts of law change; the retrieval date is how you know how old this reading is.
| Topic | How it fails you | In force | When it bites | Applies to | What applies | Instrument | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The zones where a foreigner must ask first, and the contract that is void if they did not | Somebody has to say yesMoney does not open itThe transaction never happened | In forceNot stated by the source | On the way in | Land onlyYour passport | Korea does not require a foreigner to seek permission to buy property generally. It requires it for land inside four kinds of designated area: military base and installation protection zones, designated cultural heritage sites and their protection areas, ecological and scenery conservation areas, and wildlife special protection areas. Permission must be obtained before the contract is entered into, and the authority grants it where the acquisition would not disrupt the purpose for which the zone was designated. The sanction is the strongest one available: a land acquisition contract concluded in breach is null and void, and the buyer is additionally liable to imprisonment with labour for up to two years or a fine of up to twenty million won. So this is not a cost to be underwritten but a question to be answered before signing, and it is answered by the location of the parcel rather than by anything about the buyer beyond being foreign. | Act on Report on Real Estate Transactions, Etc. (Republic of Korea), Articles 9(1), 9(2), 9(3) and 26(1). Read from the official English translation published by the Korea Legislation Research Institute. | 2026-09-06 |
| Sixty days to report, six months if nobody sold you anything | Something must be filed | In forceNot stated by the source | On the way in | All propertyYour passport | Every acquisition of Korean real estate by a foreigner has to be reported, and the clock depends on how the property was acquired. Where there is a contract, the report goes to the receiving authority within sixty days of the date it was concluded. Where the property came by inheritance, at auction or by any other means that is not a contract, the report is due within six months of acquisition. There is a third case that catches people who never thought of themselves as foreign buyers at all: a Korean national who becomes a foreigner while owning property here and wishes to keep it must report within six months of the change in status. Failure to report is penalised by a fine of up to five million won, and a false report about an acquisition by a fine of up to thirty million won. This is a filing obligation rather than a gate, but it is the obligation most often missed, because it attaches to the acquisition and not to any application the buyer had to make. | Act on Report on Real Estate Transactions, Etc. (Republic of Korea), Articles 8(1), 8(2), 8(3) and 28. Read from the official English translation published by the Korea Legislation Research Institute. | 2026-09-06 |
What is missing, and why
supply — Source does not cover this market
The dataset simply does not include this territory. Absent, not zero.
No statistics agency for this market has been read and cleared for republication. Two have been anywhere: Canada and Singapore. The data very likely exists; the permission to publish it has not been established.
What supports this, what would make it wrong, and how it could go
Record
| Why this market is on the list | Added because two layers already covered it from sources whose licences are confirmed — the ECB reference rate for the currency and the BIS policy rate for the cost of money — and neither needed a new grant, a new connector, or a new fetch. The friction layer was opened on 2026-09-06 from the official English translation of the Act on Report on Real Estate Transactions published by the Korea Legislation Research Institute. It is on the screen because it is measured, not because it was chosen. |
|---|---|
| Dossier | None written. Layers and rules only, which is why this market reads as “Measured” rather than reviewed. |
| Next review | 2026-11-15 |
| Evidence snapshot | 2026-10-06 |