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Notes -
If the population starts really falling (and the same is true in China) even in Seoul then house prices collapse by default. I’ve seen all kinds of speculation as to why this might not be the case but I can’t see it, you can’t prop up a rental market with a huge number of empty units, especially if any landlords have mortgages or want to release equity in some other way. All you need is a few years of property heading the other way and its psychological value as a speculative asset is punctured indefinitely.
If it really is house price related then the problem is going to solve itself in short order.
That's all true, and housing prices have leveled off in some neighborhoods, so the end of the bubble may be nigh. The next step is that housing speculators push for increased immigration and increased social atomization to boost housing prices and to cover the domestic labor shortage caused by boomers retiring and millenials refusing to do blue-collar work. This will boost the anti-immigration party, which is on the left in Korea.
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