Seoul's auction market is heating up. The successful bid rate for Seoul apartments rose for three straight months, and in villa auctions for multi-family or row dwellings, there are cases closing more than 100 million won above the appraised value.
According to GGAuction on the 12th, a 24.4㎡ exclusive-area multi-family dwellings unit in Gildong, Gangdong-gu, Seoul, put up for bids at the Seoul Eastern Court Division 2 on the 6th, was awarded at 362.01 million won in its first-round auction, about 100 million won higher than the appraised value (266 million won). Six bidders competed, pushing the successful bid rate (winning price as a share of appraised value) up to 136%. The property is a dwellings for which the Korea Housing & Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG) prepaid the deposit to the tenant on behalf of the landlord and filed a compulsory auction last year to recover the claim.
Since March 2024, HUG has been putting guaranteed-accident properties up for auction and directly winning them (self-bidding) to lease them as public rentals to no-home households under the "Dundeun Jeonse" dwellings program. But recently, successful bids by general third-party bidders have surged over HUG's self-bids. There are growing cases where general bidders participating alongside HUG bid higher amounts than HUG and win.
According to HUG, among HUG's auction filings last year, there were 3,510 self-awards and 4,228 third-party awards, a small gap. This year, however, third-party awards rose to 4,347 in just the first half, while HUG's direct awards stand at 1,325. General bidders took 76.6% of the 5,672 successful bids in the first half.
As general bidders increase, successful bid rates are also rising. For Seoul villas, HUG's average successful bid rate was higher than general bidders from January to March this year, but the trend reversed in April. In April, HUG's average successful bid rate was 67.28%, while third parties averaged 74.98%, 7.7 percentage points higher.
In apartment auctions, small-size units are drawing interest. In June, Seoul apartment auction cases reached 150, up about 7% from the previous month (140).
Successful bid rates kept climbing. It came in at 101.7%, up 0.9 percentage points from the previous month (100.8%), marking a three-month rising streak. In particular, the successful bid rate for small apartments of 60㎡ or less was 112.8%. The average number of bidders also increased from 5.9 the previous month to 7.2.
Yaksu Heights in Geumho-dong, Seongdong-gu, was awarded at 1.53381 billion won, 143.3% of the appraised value. Hangang Geukdong Apartment in Songpa-gu also found a new owner at 1.521 billion won, 122.5%.