The South Korean housing market has entered a drought unseen for the last six years with home trade plunging by 60 percent in Seoul last month.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced Monday that registered housing sales and purchases across the nation in January were tallied at 50,286, down 28.5 percent from the same month in 2018. It was the lowest January figure since 2013 when the real estate market had been mired in its worst slump. The exchanges were 23.8 percent below than the average of 65,950 in home trade over the past five year.

Conditions were even worse in the capital region. Trade in Seoul has virtually come to a stop with just 6,000 deals made in January, 60 percent off from 15,000 a year ago. Apartment trade dropped 34.1 percent on year to 31,305, multi-residential houses 16.2 percent and single-family houses 17.8 percent.

For the greater Seoul, the deals were down 39.8 percent on year to 22,483, while the decline was less severe for the rest of the country at 15.8 percent to 27,803.

Market experts attributed the sharp reversal to a slew of regulations of the government aimed to clamp down on speculative real estate purchases, blamed for the runaway price growth in the country’s housing market in the past few years.

Last September, the government announced that it would double the property tax on multiple home owners in speculative areas and restrict them from taking out mortgage loans, leading to a dearth of supplies in the market.

By Lee Ji-yong and Choi Mira

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]