▲ Seoul's High-End Housing Records World's Second-Highest Price Growth Rate

While OECD and BIS statistics showed relatively modest growth in Korean housing prices, the luxury housing market in Seoul alone showed a completely different picture.

According to the PGCI (Prime Global Cities Index) released by British real estate consulting firm Knight Frank, Seoul's luxury housing prices rose 25.2% year-over-year in the third quarter of last year. This was the second-highest growth rate among 46 major cities worldwide, after Tokyo, Japan (55.9%).

The PGCI is an index that tracks quarterly price changes for the top 5% of properties in 46 major cities around the world.

▲ Growth Rate More Than 10 Times the Global Average

In the third quarter of last year, the average price growth rate for luxury housing in the 46 major cities was just 2.5%.

Seoul's growth rate was approximately 10 times higher than this figure. Considering that Bengaluru, India, ranked third with a growth rate of only 9.2%, assessments indicate that Seoul and Tokyo's price surge was particularly notable.

In cumulative growth rates over the past five years, Seoul recorded 80.9%, ranking fourth in the world after Dubai, UAE (224.3%), Tokyo, Japan (115.0%), and Manila, Philippines (81.0%).

▲ Kangnam-Centered Price Increases Create Statistical Discrepancies

The significant differences in results across indicators were analyzed as stemming from the fact that price increases in high-end housing clusters such as Seoul's three Gangnam districts and the Han River belt were steeper than the national average.

Knight Frank, unlike OECD or BIS, does not analyze the entire nation or all of Seoul but rather focuses exclusively on the top 5% of properties by price. In doing so, it avoids the so-called "trap of averages" where non-capital region housing market stagnation brings down average figures, and thus more directly reflects the polarization phenomenon in the domestic housing market.

▲ Sample Survey Limitations Also Play a Role

The Korean housing price statistics used by OECD and BIS are based on the Korea Real Estate Board's National Housing Price Trend Survey.

This survey calculates prices using transaction examples of sample properties rather than actual transaction prices. As a result, there are concerns that it may not sufficiently reflect actual price changes during periods of rapid market fluctuations.

Lee Sun-hwa, senior research fellow at the National Assembly Future Institute, explained, "Seoul has severe polarization in the housing market, so there can be large differences in price appreciation between luxury and general housing."

She added, "Although Seoul's housing prices rose sharply during 2024-2025, OECD and BIS statistics may not have adequately captured these changes due to the limitations of the sample survey methodology."