• Land and Housing Review
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.33-45
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• 2021

Due to recent changes in government policy, officetels have received attention as alternative assets, along with the uplift of office and apartment prices in Seoul. However, the current officetel price indexes use small-size samples and, thus, there is a critique on their accuracy. They rely on valuation prices which lag the market trend and do not properly reflect the volatile nature of the property market, resulting in 'smoothing'. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to create the officetel price index using transaction data. The data, provided by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport from 2005 to 2020, includes sales prices and rental prices - Jeonsei and monthly rent (and their combinations). This study employed a repeat sales model for sales, jeonsei, and monthly rent indexes. It also contributes to improving conversion rates (between deposit and monthly rent) as a supplementary indicator. The main findings are as follows. First, the officetel price index and jeonsei index reached 132.5P and 163.9P, respectively, in Q4 2020 (1Q 2011=100.0P). However, the rent index was approximately below 100.0. Sales prices and jeonsei continued to rise due to high demand while monthly rent was largely unchanged due to vacancy risk. Second, the increase in the officetel sales price was lower than other housing types such as apartments and villas. Third, the employed approach has seen a potential to produce more reliable officetel price indexes reflecting high volatility compared to those indexes produced by other institutions, contributing to resolving 'smoothing'. As seen in the application in Seoul, this approach can enhance accuracy and, therefore, better assist market players to understand the market trend, which is much valuable under great uncertainties such as COVID-19 environments.