Nearly 400,000 Leave South Korea’s Housing Subscription Accounts as Seoul Cutoffs Hit Perfect Scores

The point-based apartment subscription system, designed to protect end users, is increasingly criticized as favoring a small group of asset-rich applicants. With presale prices rising on surging construction costs and strict lending rules limiting financing, some applicants with high scores are giving up because they cannot raise the money. Others say winning has become unrealistic without both cash and a large number of dependents. As a result, more would-be buyers are either crowding into no-rank lotteries or leaving the subscription market altogether.
 
According to Cheongyak Home data released on the 26th, the number of housing subscription account holders fell from 26,438,085 to 26,051,929 over the past year (March 2025 to March 2026), a drop of more than 380,000. Monthly declines were modest in the first half of last year, ranging from 0.03% to 0.09%, but the pace accelerated from October. The decline peaked in December at 0.305% from the previous month, and this year the monthly drop has continued at nearly 0.2%. Over the past 14 months, the cumulative net decrease totaled about 400,000.
 
Critics link the exodus to unusually high barriers, including complexes where the cutoff has reached a perfect score. In a first-round subscription held on the 9th for “Acro de Seocho” in Seoul’s Seocho district, the cutoff for the 59-square-meter Type C unit was the maximum 84 points, the first such case in Seoul’s private apartment presale history. Competition for that type hit 1,099.1 to 1, the highest on record. But general sales accounted for only 4.8% of the project, or 56 units, prompting assessments that the market has become a contest for a tiny group of wealthy applicants with perfect-score accounts.
 
As regular subscriptions have effectively narrowed, demand has surged into no-rank subscriptions held just days later. On the 13th, 106,093 people applied for two no-rank units at “Gangdong Heritage Xi,” a competition rate of about 53,000 to 1. The units were offered at about 730 million won, the 2022 presale price, allowing an estimated market-price gain of about 1 billion won. Observers say the lottery system — with odds of about 1 in 50,000 — has become the only remaining channel for unsubsidized, score-disadvantaged households without homes.
 
High cutoffs are also being driven by large-family, perfect-score accounts winning smaller units at price-capped projects in the Gangnam area. At “Otiere Banpo,” the minimum winning score across all unit types was 69 points, with many types in the low-to-mid 70s — levels seen as requiring a perfect-score account typically associated with families of five or more.
 
This score inflation is spreading beyond Gangnam across Seoul. The maximum score a four-person household can receive after more than 15 years without owning a home — 69 points — has effectively become the minimum needed to win. Cutoffs have risen above 69 points not only in Jamsil and Banpo but also in major areas such as “The Fine Yeonhui” in Seodaemun district and “Ichon Rael” in Yongsan district. Even four-person families that have remained without a home for 15 years are finding it difficult to win newly built apartments in Seoul, intensifying debate over whether the system still works as intended.
 
Cash requirements are also filtering out end users. For example, “Otiere Banpo,” which began taking subscriptions on the 13th, required winners to raise more than 1.1 billion won in cash within three months because it is a post-completion sale. The requirement led even some top-score applicants with 84 points to forgo applying due to insufficient funds.
 
Park Ji-min, head of the Wol-yong Subscription Research Institute, said the current system remains centered on older, large-family household structures and “fails to serve as a housing ladder at all” for the rapidly growing number of one- and two-person households. Park urged an overhaul that increases the weight of points for time without homeownership or length of subscription account membership, so that smaller households that have remained without a home can receive meaningful advantages.