Sejong’s Volatile Real Estate Market: From Capital Relocation Boom to Slump

High-rise apartment buildings in Sejong City. The city’s housing market has experienced dramatic booms and busts linked to speculation over its status as an administrative capital.

Administrative Capital Hopes and Price Surges

Sejong City’s apartment prices have a history of sharp rises and falls driven by administrative capital relocation rumors. Back in 2020, amid political discussions of moving more government functions to Sejong, apartment sale prices soared by nearly 45% in one year, the highest growth rate in Korea . This speculative boom made Sejong the nation’s hottest housing market at the time. However, when the “capital relocation” narrative receded, the trend quickly reversed – Sejong’s home prices plunged steeply in the ensuing years. In 2022, for instance, Sejong’s apartment price index crashed by about 16.7%, followed by additional declines of 5–6% per year in 2023 and 2024 . This boom-and-bust cycle – prices jumping on relocation news only to slump afterward – has repeated multiple times, leading experts to liken Sejong’s housing market to a “political theme stock” that spikes and dips with each policy rumor .

Early 2025: Election Promises Fuel a Rebound

In the first half of 2025, Sejong saw another brief uptick fueled by new political promises. Ahead of the 2025 presidential election, leading candidates (including now-President Lee Jae-myung) pledged to relocate the presidential office and National Assembly to Sejong, reviving the administrative capital idea  . Buyers – many of them outside investors – flocked in, hoping to ride the potential policy “honeymoon”. By late April 2025, Sejong’s weekly apartment price index jumped 0.49% in a single week, the biggest rise in nearly five years . This made Sejong an outlier, far outpacing the flat or falling prices in most other regions at that time. (Notably, Sejong was also the only market seeing a double-digit annualized rise in apartment rent prices during that period  , reflecting a sudden demand bump.)

Transaction activity surged as well. Monthly apartment sales in Sejong spiked tenfold from the winter doldrums to spring: climbing from just 379 deals in January to 1,446 in April 2025 . In fact, real estate transactions in April were roughly three times higher than the same period a year before . This frenzy was fed largely by investors betting on relocation. Statistics show 30.5% of Sejong’s home owners are non-local (the highest “outsider” ownership in Korea) – a group highly sensitive to Sejong relocation news . Many of these investors jumped in and even began raising asking prices (“호가”) once relocation talk resurfaced . The sudden demand was further amplified by supply factors: new housing supply in Sejong had dwindled to a trickle. Only about 1,035 apartment units were scheduled for completion in 2025 – barely one-third of the previous year’s supply, and just 5% of the annual volume a decade ago . Moreover, by early 2025 Sejong had virtually no unsold new units left in inventory (zero pre-completion unsold units for six months straight) . With this tight supply, even a modest wave of speculative buying was enough to push prices up noticeably.

Mid-2025: Cooling Off as Reality Sets In

The rally proved short-lived. After the election, the new administration tempered expectations around Sejong. President Lee Jae-myung, despite his campaign pledges, acknowledged in July that fully moving the presidential office to Sejong would be difficult without a constitutional amendment, hinting that complete relocation was not imminent . Instead, the government spoke of more gradual steps – like building a second presidential office in a nearby city (Daejeon) and accelerating the construction of a new National Assembly branch in Sejong . As these realities sank in, speculative fever cooled. By mid-July 2025, weekly price growth in Sejong had fallen back to zero . In fact, the Korea Real Estate Board’s data for the third week of July showed a 0.00% change, a stark comedown from the rapid gains just a few months earlier . (There was a negligible uptick of +0.03% in the second week of July , but this appears to have been a brief blip.)

Perhaps the clearest sign of the cooldown is the collapse in sales volume. By late July, transaction numbers had dropped to a fraction of their spring levels. Only around 141 apartment sales occurred in July (as of the 23rd), which is less than 10% of April’s volume . This dramatic fall – from over 1,400 deals in April to barely 140 in July – indicates that buyers have largely retreated to the sidelines. With demand evaporating, the negotiating power in the market shifted back to buyers, and sellers found it increasingly difficult to get their hoped-for prices. As one headline lamented, “Now it’s hard to even get 800 million won!” for a Sejong apartment, reflecting the frustration of homeowners seeing far fewer offers than before.

Steep Price Corrections on Individual Properties

Actual sale prices confirm that Sejong’s housing values have come down significantly from their peaks. Several notable apartment transactions in mid-2025 illustrate the reset:
• Dajeong-dong, Gaonmaul 4-danji (e-Pyeonhansesang Prugio) – 84 ㎡ unit sold in July 2025 for ₩730 million, which is still ₩390 million (≈35%) below its November 2020 peak of ₩1.12 billion . Despite the spring bounce, this property remains far from recovering its pandemic-era high.
• Daepyeong-dong, Haedeulmaeul 6-danji (e-Pyeonhansesang Sejong River Park) – 99 ㎡ unit changed hands in July 2025 for ₩850 million, down a hefty ₩550 million from its record ₩1.4 billion price at the market’s height . In other words, it lost about 39% of its value from the top. (This sale was recently reported as the apartment finally finding a buyer after struggling to sell .)
• Saerom-dong, Saetteum 6-danji (Hillstate) – 84 ㎡ unit sold for ₩870 million in July 2025. That figure is roughly 80% of its May 2022 peak (₩1.1 billion) , meaning a 20% drop from the highest valuation two years prior.
• Areum-dong, Beomjigi 9-danji (Hanshin Plus Elite Park) – 84 ㎡ unit was recorded at ₩500 million in mid-2025. While this was a slight uptick from ₩475 million a couple of months earlier, it remains ₩250 million lower than this same unit’s ₩750 million peak in 2021 .

In summary, many Sejong apartments that once commanded well over ￦1 billion at the peak of hype are now trading in the ￦500–800 million range. The pullback is significant, erasing a large portion of the gains from the “relocation rally.” For homeowners who bought near the top, this downturn has been painful – hence some “집주인 난리” (panicked landlords) as local media put it, with sellers lamenting how far prices have fallen.

Factors Behind the Volatility and Outlook

What makes Sejong’s housing market so volatile? A key factor is its unique tie to government policy signals. Large swings in sentiment – essentially boom-bust cycles following political announcements – are not seen to the same degree in other cities. As real estate analysts note, Sejong’s high share of investor-owners and speculators means home prices here react almost like a stock tied to political news . When prospects of government relocation improve, investors pile in and prices jump; when those prospects dim, demand vanishes and prices correct swiftly. This dynamic has earned comparisons to “political theme stocks”, where rumors can whip prices into a frenzy or a freefall.

Another factor is the supply-demand imbalance. Sejong was a boomtown through the 2010s – by design, as a planned administrative city – with tens of thousands of new apartment units built. But in recent years, new supply has dried up considerably (only ~1,000 units added in 2025, versus nearly 19,000 in 2015) , and the city currently has virtually no unsold new homes sitting on the market . This means that any uptick in demand (even short-lived speculative demand) encounters a tight supply, causing outsized price swings. Conversely, when demand pulls back, sellers have few new buyers coming in, so prices slide quickly until they find a floor. In essence, low inventory acts as an accelerant for both price increases and decreases in Sejong.

Local real estate experts caution that buyers should be careful with “chasing” sudden price run-ups in such an environment . The consensus advice is that housing in Sejong should be approached from a real end-user perspective, not as a quick speculative trade on political news . “Don’t rely solely on political promises; make sure the purchase makes sense for your actual needs,” one industry insider advised, emphasizing safety over hype. This cautious stance is echoed by analysts who point out that Sejong’s recent bounce was smaller and more short-lived than the 2020 episode, suggesting that without concrete policy fulfillment, the market won’t sustain long-term growth purely on rumors .

Going forward, many observers believe the current pattern could indeed mirror the post-2020 decline . With the new government moving slowly on relocation plans, Sejong’s prospects are again turning subdued. Even President Lee’s team appears to be focusing on partial measures rather than any quick, dramatic relocation, which tempers speculative excitement. There are also broader headwinds – rising interest rates and a national housing market slowdown – that contributed to Sejong’s earlier corrections and may continue to weigh on prices. Unless a clear, game-changing policy for Sejong is enacted, the city’s housing market is expected to remain choppy and sensitive to any political soundbites.

Conclusion

Sejong City’s real estate ride in recent years underscores the city’s unusual vulnerability to political ebbs and flows. What was once envisioned purely as an administrative hub has also become a speculator’s arena, with apartment values swinging wildly on headlines. The latest chapter in 2025 showed a familiar story: election-fueled optimism gave Sejong a short-lived bounce, only for reality to bring it back to equilibrium. For homeowners and buyers in Sejong, this volatility is a double-edged sword – there are opportunities during surges, but also risks of abrupt downturns. As the dust settles, the prevailing wisdom is to stay grounded in fundamentals: housing decisions in Sejong should be driven by genuine need and affordability, rather than chasing the ever-shifting winds of political fortune . In the long run, a more stable trajectory for Sejong will likely depend on balanced development and concrete follow-through on any decentralization plans – not just bold headlines. For now, the city remains a vivid case study in how deeply politics and real estate can intertwine, to the benefit or peril of those caught in between.

Sources:
• 김경민, “오빠, 이젠 8억 받기도 힘들어”…집주인 난리 – 매일경제, 26 July 2025  .
• 정진형, 세종 아파트 거래 10분의 1 뚝…반짝 오르던 집값 잠잠 – 뉴시스, 23 July 2025  .
• 위지혜, “이 동네 집값, 꼭 정치테마주 같다”…세종시, 전셋값도 두자릿수 상승률 – 매일경제, 1 May 2025  .
• David D. Lee, “South Korea’s presidential favourite has plans for new ‘de facto’ capital” – Al Jazeera, 31 May 2025  .
• 국토교통부 실거래가 공개시스템 자료 (세종시 아파트 거래 현황) . (Real transaction data via Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport)