This year, the Seoul commercial real estate market surpassed a cumulative 25 trillion won through the third quarter. It has already outpaced last year's full-year result (about 22 trillion won), and there is a strong outlook that it could top 30 trillion won by year-end.
According to the "2025 third-quarter domestic commercial real estate market report" released on the 29th by CBRE Korea, a global real estate services company, commercial real estate investment volume in Seoul in the third quarter this year was 7.9486 trillion won. That was up 1.4% from the same period a year earlier. Including an ultra-large transaction in the Bundang area, the total market size for the third quarter reached 10 trillion won.
Office assets accounted for 7.6587 trillion won, or 77% of commercial real estate transactions. Large transactions such as Pangyo Tech One Tower (about 1.9 trillion won) and Tower 730 (about 870 billion won) led the market. The average vacancy rate for grade-A offices in Seoul rose 0.5 percentage points from the previous quarter to 3.1%, while the Gangnam area fell 0.3 percentage points to 1.5%. The central business district (4.1%) and Yeouido (3.6%) each increased by 0.9 percentage points and 0.8 percentage points, respectively.
Real rent rose 1.0% to 37,624 won per square meter, and nominal rent increased 0.9% to 39,964 won. In the Gangnam area, Toss Bank moved into Opus 459, and in Yeouido, the Korea Fire Insurance Association and NH NongHyup Capital signed transfer agreements to move to One Sentinel.
Logistics asset transactions totaled 1.2576 trillion won, 2.6 times the previous quarter. The easing of concerns about oversupply helped revive domestic and foreign investment activity. Although supply of grade-A logistics centers in the Seoul metropolitan area fell 68% year over year, the vacancy rate for large assets in southern areas such as Anseong and Icheon remains below 5%.
The retail market also continued to improve on the back of a recovery in domestic consumption and an increase in foreign tourists. In Myeong-dong, vacancies fell for four straight quarters to the 7% range, the lowest since 2018. In Gangnam and Seongsu-dong, move-ins were active, centered on fashion, beauty, and medical categories, and Chinese brands also increased their entry into the domestic market.
Choi Soo-hye, executive director and head of research at CBRE Korea, said, "In the third quarter, strategic investments based on real demand and high-quality asset leasing activity continued, centered on offices and logistics," and added, "More investors are proactively executing asset strategies focused on large transactions, and gradual market growth is expected in line with the possibility of interest rate cuts."