Can Foreigners Buy Property in Seoul? The 2025 Permit Rules

Korea has never banned foreign property ownership, and it still does not. What changed in 2025 is narrower but consequential: in designated zones, a foreign buyer now needs government permission before signing a contract, and the permission comes with strings attached.

What changed on 26 August 2025?

Seoul was designated in full as a foreign land transaction permit zone, along with parts of Gyeonggi Province and Incheon. Inside those zones, a foreign buyer of residential property must obtain approval from the local authority before entering into a purchase contract.

The permit is granted for actual residential use, which is where the two obligations come from.

Outside the designated zones — including Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, Ulsan, Jeju and most mid-sized cities — the previous framework still applies.

What did not change?

Three things are worth separating from the headline, because they are frequently confused with it.

There is still no nationality-based ownership ban. Foreigners can hold Korean real estate with full ownership rights, and the property register makes no distinction once title passes.

There is still no general residency requirement to own property. A non-resident can buy outside the permit zones without holding a Korean visa. What the market itself is doing is a separate question, which we track in our housing coverage.

And the permit is a zone rule, not a national one. Reading “Korea restricted foreign property purchases” as a country-wide ban gets the scope wrong by a wide margin.

What does it actually cost?

Acquisition costs in Korea are front-loaded. Acquisition tax, brokerage commission and registration costs together typically run 5 to 6.5 percent of the purchase price, before any financing costs. That share does not vary by nationality.

Applied to what apartments actually sold for in June 2026, the entry cost looks like this.

Those price figures are medians of completed sales, not asking prices. Across the 25 districts in June 2026 the median district sat at ₩1.10 billion, ranging from Dobong at ₩0.55 billion to Gangnam at ₩2.74 billion.

What do apartments cost in each district?

Every district in Seoul, ranked by price per square metre. These are medians of the 5,279 sales that completed in June 2026, excluding cancelled contracts.

Price per square metre is the more useful column. The median sale price reflects which units happened to sell that month — a district where larger apartments changed hands looks more expensive than it is. We explain that distinction, and why it matters for reading any Korean property figure, in Seoul Apartment Sales Fell 41% in a Month.

One caveat on timing: June 2026 is the most recent month whose figures have passed Korea’s 30-day sale reporting deadline. More recent months are still filling in and understate both volume and coverage.

How do you read a Korean listing?

Three conventions will make every figure above easier to check against what an agent shows you, and they catch out almost everyone arriving from another market.

Area is quoted in 평 (pyeong), not square metres. One pyeong is 3.3058 m². A unit advertised as “34평” has roughly 84 m² of exclusive area. Official records use square metres; agents and listing sites use pyeong. The per-square-metre figures above convert from the official records.

Prices are quoted in 억 (100 million won) and 만원 (10,000 won). Gangnam’s June median of ₩2.74 billion appears in Korean listings as 27억 4천만원. There is no comma convention that matches Western grouping, so reading the unit word matters more than reading the digits.

Exclusive area (전용면적) is what gets measured. It excludes shared corridors, lobbies, stairwells and parking. A building may advertise a larger “supply area” that includes those, so the same apartment can appear 20 to 30 percent bigger in marketing material than in the transaction record. Every figure on this page uses exclusive area.

One more cost that does not appear in the purchase price: 관리비, a monthly building maintenance charge billed separately from any mortgage. It scales with floor area and is routinely overlooked by buyers budgeting from the sale price alone.

Who does the permit really filter out?

The permit’s occupancy obligation changes who the rule filters out. A buyer planning to live in the property is inconvenienced by paperwork. A buyer planning to hold the unit as a rental or a pure investment runs into a requirement they structurally cannot satisfy, because the permit is granted on the premise of actual residence.

That distinction, rather than the permit itself, is the part most English-language summaries skip.

Rules affecting foreign residents change often, and the numbers behind them move monthly. We track both in policy and housing coverage.

This is not legal advice. Zone designations and permit conditions change, and local authorities apply them case by case. Confirm current requirements with the relevant district office before signing anything.