One 84㎡ Flat, Four Different Prices: Inside Seoul's Metro Housing Split

The clearest reading of the transaction records filed with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for the first week of July 2026 is that “square meters” no longer tells you what a home is worth in the Seoul metropolitan area. Four registered sales of the same 84㎡ layout — the standard mid-size Korean apartment — closed anywhere from 480 million won in Incheon to 1.88 billion won in southern Suwon. Same footprint, nearly a fourfold spread. Location, not size, is now the dominant price variable across the capital region.

The 84㎡ benchmark, priced four ways

The 84㎡ unit is the most-traded floor plan in Korea, which makes it a useful yardstick. In the July 4–5 filings it stretched across an unusually wide band:

• Gwanggyo Jayeon & Hillstate (Uiui-dong, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon), a 2012-vintage complex of 1,764 homes: 1.88 billion won, closed July 4.
• Dongcheon D’east (Dongcheon-dong, Suji-gu, Yongin), 1,334 homes from 2007: 1.24 billion won, July 4.
• Hanam Daemyung Riverside Town (Sinjang-dong, Hanam): 975 million won, July 4.
• Songdo Ocean Park Verdium (Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon), a 2020 build: 665 million won, July 5.
• Ganseok Kumho Eoureum (Ganseok-dong, Namdong-gu, Incheon): 480 million won, July 5.

Reduced to a per-square-meter figure, Gwanggyo cleared roughly 22.4 million won per ㎡, while Ganseok landed near 5.7 million — a ratio close to four to one for homes a buyer’s search filter would treat as interchangeable. The premium tracks proximity to jobs, newer construction and the Gwanggyo and Suji submarkets that have anchored the southern metro’s high end.

Small footprints, big tickets

Size and price have partly decoupled at the top of the market. In Sinheung-dong, Seongnam, a 74㎡ unit at Sanseong Station Forestia changed hands for 1.6 billion won on July 5 — more than the 84㎡ Dongcheon home and roughly triple the larger Ganseok flat. A 51㎡ apartment at Misa Riverside Star Hills in Hanam reached 1.06 billion won on July 4, crossing the billion-won line at barely half the standard size. Compact units in transit-rich, redevelopment-adjacent districts are commanding prices that older large-format apartments in outer Incheon cannot approach.

At the other end of the range, the July 5 sale of a 36㎡ home at Uman Jugong 4-danji in Suwon — a 1,152-home estate first occupied in March 1992 — for 295 million won shows the metro region still holds sub-300-million entry points, concentrated in aging low-rise stock.

How much a floor is worth

Several complexes recorded two sales of the identical layout within days, isolating the value of height and timing:

• At Ganseok Kumho Eoureum, the 84㎡ unit that sold for 480 million won on the 13th floor (July 5) compared with 420 million won for a first-floor unit registered July 11 — a 60-million-won gap attributable largely to floor level.
• At e-Pyeonhansesang Songdo in Incheon, a 26th-floor 70㎡ home closed at 568 million won on July 4, about 23 million above the 545 million won paid for an 11th-floor unit on July 7.
• The Seongnam Forestia 74㎡ trades diverged by about 105 million won between July 5 and July 7, underlining how thin same-week comparables can swing on individual unit attributes rather than any broad market move.

These intra-complex spreads are a reminder that headline “average” prices smooth over differences of tens of millions of won driven by floor, view and exposure.

Reading the week

Two patterns stand out from the early-July registry. First, the metropolitan market is stratifying by district rather than by dwelling size: Gwanggyo, Suji and central Seongnam sit in a tier of their own, while Incheon’s Ganseok and parts of Songdo remain accessible on a per-area basis. Second, newer completions and stations-adjacent redevelopment zones are pulling smaller units above larger, older ones — Hanam’s 2016-era Misa and Seongnam’s Sanseong Station corridor being the clearest cases here.

Because these are individual registered transactions rather than a market index, they describe where deals cleared in one week, not a trend line. The registry updates continuously as contracts are reported, so the fuller picture for July will firm up as later filings arrive. What the first week already establishes is that the price of a Seoul-area home is now written mostly by its address.