A night view of Seoul city (image: TF-urban/flickr)
SEOUL, Sep. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – It is shocking that the land size that foreigners own in the Seoul Metropolitan City is as large as that of Yeouido, a large island in the Han River in Seoul and Seoul’s main business and investment banking district. Currently, Americans own about 60 percent of the entire land that foreigners have bought to date, but the Chinese are expediting their acquiring property trend in Seoul.
Seoul Metropolitan Council member Choi, Pan-sul said on September 16 that as of the first half of 2014 foreigners claim the ownership on the land size of 2,604,899m2, equivalent to that of Yeouido or 0.43 percent of Seoul, according to data about the rates of foreigners’ acquiring property that the Seoul Metropolitan Government submitted to the council member.
Taking the owners’ nationalities into account, Americans have the largest land size of 1,522,546m2, accounting for over the half of the foreigners’ owned land, followed by the Chinese (135,485 m2) and the Japanese (102,163m2).
As for the purposes of buying property, commercial property is the largest as 72o,209 m2, followed by apartments (436,862m2) and single-detached dwellings (285,797m2).
Reportedly, the Chinese are most vigorous in acquiring property in Seoul, purchasing 113 lots of land in 2011, 187 in 2012, 463 in 2013, and 352 only in the first half of 2014.
By Eugene Yu (eugene@koreabizwire.com)
