JK

your local cousin for renting your home in Korea

[JK @cousin_jk]

Wolse, jeonse, ban-jeonse are different ways the owner receives value for letting you live in their home. But the actual point to note is:

this aint a choice you make after finding a home. The owner decides how the home enters the market. You just choose either pool of homes.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Daehueng's family size apartment (over 85sqm) compounds is the beginning of Mapo's urban high-rise family housing range, continuing to Yumni, Ahyeon, Gongdeok.

They behave very different from the compounds in Sangam, Seongsan, even Mangwon.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Median deposit also very different:
Yonsei side 30M vs. Ewha side 10M

Median rent is the opposite:
Yonsei side 650k vs. 900k

[JK @cousin_jk]

They are in the same administrative Sinchon-dong. But Ewha Women's Univ. side is an officetel land. Yeonse Univ. student village pocket is a low risers boarding house unit (다가구) central.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Wolse and jeonse have different unit pools.
Nonetheless, for the same size units in the same hood, effective monthly housing cost/sqm tends to be cheaper in jeonse lease.
Wolse pays premium for optionality and having fewer strings attached.
This isn't just Sinchon's case.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Or just a bunch of unlivable/mispriced units too.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Aging listings in a high demand hood like Sinchon sometimes means to me first-time renters' decision fatigue. Not always.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Wow, 89.7% rental listing exclusivity for offices in Sinchon.. That's the highest rate I've ever seen. Knock more budongsan doors if you search there!

[JK @cousin_jk]

Wide search chases waves.
Deep search chooses a peak, learns it, and adjusts/waits from there.
And I'm talking bout housing search.

[JK @cousin_jk]

The absolute numbers show Seongsan is enormous.

25,254 households.
47,185 population.
214 estimated rental doors.
269 products.
571 listings.
147 advertising offices.

It's the biggest residential ecosystem of the six by a mile.

But relative to that huge resident base:
Doors/households: only 0.85%, lowest in the orbit.
There are lots of observable doors because Seongsan itself is huge, not because rental inventory is especially abundant relative to the neighborhood.

Now, economically:
Median unit size (all lease types): 28㎡, smallest of my Hongdae set
Modal and median Wolse unit size bucket: Tiny (0-20㎡)
Median Wolse ER: ₩787,500, second cheapest
Modal Wolse rent band: ₩0-500k, cheapest
Seongsan is the affordable side of Hongdae.

Yeonnam says:
Spend more, get more home.
Seongsan says:
You can keep the total commitment lower by taking less home.

And then the market-interface statistics go crazy:
2.12 listing inflation.
2.67 listings/door.
147 offices advertising.
39.58% Top-5 listing share.

I dug deeper.
Much of this seems to come from a few offices multiplying a surprisingly small number of doors--in the southeast pocket--into enormous numbers of listings.

One office alone:
5 estimated doors.
6 products.
121 listings.
Yeap.

And even the low 8% fresh-listing rate now matters.
Hapjeong is 32%. Seongsan is 8%.
That makes Seongsan look less like a rapidly turning market and more like an inventory surface repeatedly occupied by existing advertisements.

Seongsan has a lot of housing, but not necessarily a lot of housing looking for you.
And it looks busier online than it may feel on the ground.

Seongsan housing cluster map:
https://t.co/toeKW7YhzC

[JK @cousin_jk]

Seongsan is desired to live in thesedays for those who work and play in Hongdae. Cheaper. Small unit central.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Listings ain't the housing market. They're just the tiny portion of the market that happens to be visible today.

[JK @cousin_jk]

https://t.co/8XC1K3j7lJ

[JK @cousin_jk]

Yeonnam feels pricy, but comes with space. It also likes to ask you for a heavier deposit to enter, compared to other Hongdae hoods.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Don’t search wider. Wait deeper.
And then wait for the right defect.

[JK @cousin_jk]

Whitebelt is where we feel the most fun..

[JK @cousin_jk]

Homemade mulhwae. Pohang represents!

[JK @cousin_jk]

Wow.. Rajo.. he was 10 year old then I was living in Lakey briefly. The kid was shredding ruthlessly. I remember one day the boys were talking about Mason Ho as a freak nature having visited a week before, Rajo goes, “Do you guys think Mason is good? I don’t really think so.” And we were all shocked by that. 5 years later Rajo has become the Padang Padang Cup winner. Congrats, and lembo ade!