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Foreign-buyer rules

Buying and holding a Seoul home as a foreigner

Korean law does not bar foreign nationals from owning homes in Seoul, but it adds permission, residence and reporting conditions that since 2025 cover every apartment in the city

Noah BergBy Noah Berg, Rules & Access Correspondent

Published 29 September 2026 at 8:02 pm GMT+8.

  • Data as of 29 September 2026
  • Official sources

This guide will be updated after the National Assembly votes on the government's 2026 tax bill, and when the Seoul permit zones reach their end dates on 31 December 2026 and 25 August 2027. Rules and figures are as read on 29 September 2026.

This guide sets out, in the order a buyer meets them, the permit zones, the permit itself, the reports that follow a purchase, the loan limits, the acquisition tax due on the purchase, and the holding tax an owner pays each year, both under current law and under the bill now before the Assembly.

The permit zones that cover Seoul

Three land transaction permit zone (토지거래허가구역) designations overlap in Seoul. Two apply to every buyer, and the third applies only to foreign buyers.

  • MOLIT zone for all Seoul apartments. Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) notice 2025-1219 of 15 October 2025 covers apartments in all 25 Seoul districts, together with listed row and multi-unit houses that share a complex with apartments, from 20 October 2025 to 31 December 2026. MOLIT's 15 October 2025 agenda document states that buyers under this designation must live in the home for two years from acquisition, and that this applies to Korean and foreign buyers alike.
  • Seoul city zone for four districts. Seoul city notice 2025-2774 of 25 September 2025 re-designated the city's own zone covering apartments in Gangnam, Seocho, Songpa and Yongsan, first designated on 24 March 2025, for 1 October 2025 to 31 December 2026.
  • MOLIT zone for foreign buyers. Under Article 10 of the Real Estate Transaction Reporting Act (부동산 거래신고 등에 관한 법률), MOLIT can designate a permit zone for a named class of buyer, including foreigners. It designated all 25 Seoul districts, 23 cities and counties in Gyeonggi and districts of Incheon from 26 August 2025. MOLIT notice 2026-1105 of 20 August 2026 re-designated the same area for 26 August 2026 to 25 August 2027. The permit applies when the buyer is a foreign individual, company or government (a "foreigner etc." under Article 2(4) of the Act) and the property is a detached house, multi-household house, apartment, row house or multi-unit house, where the land share exceeds 6 ㎡ in a residential zone or 15 ㎡ in a commercial zone. This zone therefore reaches beyond apartments to other housing types.

Seoul's online designation list shows the start dates of these zones but not their end dates, which appear in the notices themselves. As of 29 September 2026, the list of notices on Seoul's designation page shows no renewal of either apartment designation beyond 31 December 2026. Several smaller Seoul permit zones for specific reconstruction and redevelopment sites, such as Apgujeong and the Jamsil, Samseong, Daechi and Cheongdam reconstruction apartments, run on their own notices and dates.

MOLIT's 2025 announcement of the foreigner zone states that a buyer who receives a permit must move in within four months of the permit and live in the home for two years after acquiring it. A breach can lead to an enforcement fine of up to 10 per cent of the land acquisition price, imposed repeatedly until the obligation is met, and the permit can be revoked. In practice, these rules suit a buyer who plans to live in the home, not one who plans to let it out from abroad.

Getting the permit before the contract

Inside a permit zone, the permit comes first. A contract signed without a permit has no legal effect (Article 11(6) of the Reporting Act). The application is made to the district office and must set out the intended use of the property and how the purchase will be funded (Article 11(3)). MOLIT said in August 2025 that it would widen the funding-plan requirement to permit-zone deals and add the source of overseas funds and the buyer's visa status. The enforcement decree read for this guide does not show that detail in its text, so its current form should be confirmed with the district office.

Reporting the purchase

Two reports follow a purchase, and they go to different offices.

  • Transaction report. Every sale contract, whoever the buyer, must be reported to the district office within 30 days of signing, by the broker where one prepared the contract (Article 3 of the Reporting Act). Foreigners who acquire property other than by sale contract, for example by inheritance or auction, file their own report within six months (Article 8).
  • Foreign exchange report. A non-resident who buys Korean property with money brought in or remitted from abroad must file a property acquisition report (form 9-12) with a foreign exchange bank, together with documents proving the transaction, under Article 9-42 of the Foreign Exchange Transaction Regulation made under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act. Korean nationals living abroad are exempt from that report, and cases outside the listed categories go to the Governor of the Bank of Korea. When the property is sold, sending the proceeds abroad requires documents proving the purchase and sale to be filed with the bank (Article 9-43). The version of the regulation read took effect on 16 September 2026. Foreign nationals who are residents of Korea for foreign exchange purposes fall under other rules, which this guide does not cover.

Loan limits

All of Seoul has been a regulated area (조정대상지역) since 16 October 2025, and mortgage limits there are tight for any buyer. The Ministry of Economy and Finance's questions and answers on its 2026 tax plan list the limits below.

Regulated-area mortgage limitFigure
Maximum loan-to-value ratio, buyer who owns no home40%
Maximum loan-to-value ratio, buyer who already owns a home0%
Loan cap, home up to 1.5 billion won600 million won
Loan cap, home between 1.5 and 2.5 billion won400 million won
Loan cap, home above 2.5 billion won200 million won

None of the sources read says whether Korean lenders will lend to a non-resident foreign buyer. That question should be put to a lender directly.

Acquisition tax

A buyer also owes acquisition tax (취득세), a local tax under the Local Tax Act (지방세법), and must file and pay it within 60 days of acquiring the home (Article 20). Where land in a permit zone is paid for in full before the permit is granted, the 60 days run from the date of the permit. The rates below are from the version of the Act in force from 1 July 2026, read on 29 September 2026, and the Act does not set them by the buyer's nationality.

For a home bought for payment, the standard rate depends on the acquisition value (Article 11(1)8). It is 1 per cent up to 600 million won, rises on a sliding scale set by a formula in the Act between 600 million and 900 million won, and is 3 per cent above 900 million won. A buyer of a share in a home is charged at the band for the value of the whole home.

Higher rates apply according to how many homes the buyer's household will hold and whether the home being bought is in a regulated area, which all of Seoul is (Article 13-2). In a regulated area, a purchase that brings a household to two homes is taxed at 8 per cent, and one that brings it to three or more homes at 12 per cent. A company buying a home pays 12 per cent. The Act builds these rates from a 4 per cent standard rate plus two or four times a 2 per cent surcharge base rate (Article 6). A household with one home that buys a second because of a move, study, work or a similar reason, and sells the first within three years, counts as a temporary two-home household and is not charged the higher rate (Article 28-5 of the Enforcement Decree, in force 18 September 2026).

The decree also sets who counts as a household and which homes are counted. A household is the buyer and the family recorded with them in the resident register or, for a foreign national, in the foreign resident registration records, and a spouse and unmarried children under 30 belong to the same household even when recorded separately (Article 28-3). The count covers homes the household holds in Korea, together with reconstruction membership rights (조합원입주권), presale rights (분양권) and officetels taxed as homes (Article 28-4 of the decree and Article 13-3 of the Act).

Surtaxes charged with acquisition tax, such as the local education tax, and the higher rates the Act sets for homes it classes as luxury homes (고급주택), are not set out here. This guide does not cover tax on a sale.

The holding tax under current law

An owner of a Seoul home pays two annual taxes. The local property tax (재산세) is levied by each district under the Local Tax Act. The comprehensive real estate holding tax (종합부동산세) is a national tax collected by the National Tax Service on top of it. Both are assessed on the owner of record on 1 June each year, and the national holding tax is billed for payment between 1 and 15 December. For a non-resident individual with no business in Korea, the Comprehensive Real Estate Holding Tax Act fixes the place of taxation at the location of the property, or at the location of the most valuable property if there are several.

Under the law in force on 29 September 2026, which is the version effective from 1 January 2026, the holding tax base is the total officially assessed value (공시가격) of an owner's homes, minus a basic deduction, multiplied by a fair market value ratio set by decree at 60 per cent. The basic deduction is 1.2 billion won for a "one household, one home" owner and 900 million won for other individual owners. The decree limits "one household, one home" status to owners who are residents for Korean income tax purposes. A non-resident owner of a single Seoul home therefore receives the 900 million won deduction today, about 847,000 in the Singapore currency at the European Central Bank reference rates for 28 September 2026, which put the euro at 1,545.05 won and at 1.4538 SGD. The rate schedule currently depends on how many homes an owner holds, with rates from 0.5 to 2.7 per cent for owners of up to two homes and from 0.5 to 5.0 per cent for owners of three or more. The holding tax credits the property tax already paid on the same base, and the annual increase in the two taxes combined is capped at 150 per cent of the previous year's total.

The holding tax under the bill

The Ministry of Economy and Finance published its 2026 tax reform plan on 3 August 2026, proposing to base the holding tax on the value of the home and whether the owner lives in it, rather than on the number of homes held. The Cabinet approved revised government bills on 1 September 2026, and the ministry said the bills would reach the National Assembly by 3 September for review during the regular session. The Cabinet version keeps the 1.2 billion won deduction for a one-home owner who does not live in the home, where the 3 August plan had proposed 900 million won, and keeps the 150 per cent cap, where the plan had proposed 200 per cent. Some pages on the ministry's site still describe the earlier figures. None of the proposals below is law, and they would apply from the 2027 tax year if passed.

  • A one-home owner who lives in the home would receive a 1.4 billion won basic deduction, up from 1.2 billion won.
  • Other individual owners would receive 400 million won plus a share of 500 million won proportional to the value of the home they live in. A married couple who jointly own one home they do not live in would receive 600 million won each under the Cabinet version, down from 900 million won each today.
  • The fair market value ratio would rise from 60 to 70 per cent in 2027 for most owners. For owners of three or more homes, and for owners of homes in regulated areas who do not qualify as one household, one home, it would rise to 70 per cent in 2027 and 80 per cent from 2028.
  • The rate schedule would be based on the value of the taxable base rather than the number of homes, reaching a single schedule in 2028.
  • The holding-period tax credit for one-home owners would become a residence-period credit, with a transitional choice in 2027, and the credit would be capped at 8 million won in 2027 and 6 million won from 2028.
Taxable base (after deduction and ratio)Now, up to 2 homesNow, 3 or more homes2027 proposal, up to 2 homes2028 proposal, all owners
Up to 300 million won0.5%0.5%0.5%0.5%
300 to 600 million won0.7%0.7%0.7%0.7%
600 million to 1.2 billion won1.0%1.0%1.3%1.3%
1.2 to 2.5 billion won1.3%2.0%1.5%2.0%
2.5 to 5 billion won1.5%3.0%2.0%3.0%
5 to 9.4 billion won2.0%4.0%2.7%4.0%
Over 9.4 billion won2.7%5.0%3.5%5.0%

The ministry's summary says a lived-in single home worth around 2 billion won at market value would owe no holding tax, that lived-in single homes up to about 3 billion won would see lower bills, and that for lived-in single homes the change would be kept small up to about 4 to 5 billion won, with rises above that. It says bills can also rise for homes the owner does not live in and for owners of several homes. The bill does not separately address non-resident owners, and how it would apply to them is a question for a Korean tax adviser.

The package does not change local property tax rates. It touches the property tax only indirectly, through the credit for property tax paid and the combined 150 per cent cap. The 1 June 2027 assessment date is the first one the proposal could affect.

This is not legal, tax, or investment advice. Confirm with a qualified professional in the place.

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Sources

Sources read 29 September 2026.