It has been confirmed that Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, argued that the Korea Real Estate Board (REB)'s weekly apartment price statistics should be abolished, saying they fuel market confusion and speculative sentiment. With ruling party lawmakers and the Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport voicing concerns, and now the Seoul mayor publicly pointing out the side effects of the weekly home price statistics, debate over revamping the data is expected to reignite.
According to the real estate industry and the Seoul city government on the 22nd, Mayor Oh strongly criticized the Korea Real Estate Board (REB)'s weekly apartment price trends during a closed-door luncheon with real estate experts on the 16th. That morning, the Seoul city government held a roundtable of real estate experts chaired by Vice Mayor for Administrative Affairs 2 Kim Seong-bo. The meeting, which has been held once every month or two since the second half of last year to discuss real estate market trends and key pending issues, was the fifth of its kind. Mayor Oh did not attend the roundtable, but after the event he proposed an unscheduled luncheon to the experts. Six experts and two Seoul city officials were said to have attended.
According to multiple attendees, Mayor Oh said at the luncheon, "The weekly apartment price statistics encourage speculative sentiment and stoke market confusion," adding, "They should be abolished." The point was that price change rates released at short intervals draw outsized attention compared with the actual market flow and can stimulate buying sentiment and listing asking prices.
When Mayor Oh directly criticized the government's representative home price statistics and even mentioned the need for abolition, some attendees reportedly voiced opposition. One attendee said, "While the weekly statistics have limitations, there was also the view that we need to consider carefully whether it is appropriate to eliminate even data that allow us to quickly grasp market conditions."
The Korea Real Estate Board (REB)'s weekly apartment price trends are the weekly data from the nationally approved Statistics on Nationwide Home Prices. It calculates regional selling prices and jeonse price change rates by surveying actual transaction prices and listing prices of sample apartments, as well as opinions from local brokerages. Private firms such as KB Real Estate and Real Estate R114 also release weekly apartment price trends.
While weekly statistics have the advantage of showing market flow quickly, they have drawn criticism that, because prices are calculated every week even for complexes with few transactions, asking prices and the investigator's judgment may be overly reflected in the data. There is also criticism that the 0.01–0.1 percentage point week-to-week change rates, released every week, are repeatedly cited in media reports and market outlooks, fueling buying sentiment.
Debate over the reliability of the statistics also continued. In 2020, the government announced, based on Korea Appraisal Board statistics, that Seoul apartment prices rose 14.2% in the three years after the launch of the Moon Jae-in administration. At the time, critics said the increase was excessively low compared with private statistics and perceived home price gains.
In 2024, prosecutors indicted 11 people, including former Blue House policy chiefs Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Sang-jo and former Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) Kim Hyun-mee, on charges including violating the Statistics Act. Prosecutors believe that officials at the Blue House and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport pressured the Korea Real Estate Board (REB) at the time to lower the weekly home price change rates. The defendants deny the charges, saying there was no manipulation of the statistics, and the first trial is currently underway.
Calls for abolition also emerged in politics. At the "Discussion on measures to improve home price statistics" jointly hosted by Democratic Party of Korea lawmakers Lee Yeon-hee and Yeom Tae-young on Sept. 30 last year, it was argued that the weekly statistics trigger market overreactions and fail to properly reflect actual transaction flows.
Minister Kim Yun-duk of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport also said at the National Assembly's Land Infrastructure and Transport Committee audit on Oct. 13 last year that he was "fully in agreement in terms of the overall direction" with calls to abolish the weekly statistics, adding, "We will take steps to reduce the harms inherent in the statistics." While the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) is reviewing a plan to revamp the data, the Korea Real Estate Board (REB) is still releasing the weekly apartment price trends.