More than 7,200 real estate agencies in Seoul have disappeared over the past three years.
This means roughly one out of every six agencies has shut its doors.
According to Seoul's statistics on living-related business sectors, there were 36,545 real estate agencies in Seoul as of the first quarter of this year.
After peaking at 43,792 in the first quarter of 2023, the number has dropped by 16.5% over a three-year span.
Experts analyze that while strong government loan regulations and the economic downturn played a role, agencies are also losing their ground to the emergence of "AI intermediary agents."
Revenues of member companies under the Korea Proptech Forum, which includes major domestic proptech firms like Zigbang and Dabang, surged by more than 80% from 1.8518 trillion won in 2021 to 3.3735 trillion won last year.
Direct transactions grew by an even wider margin.
The number of completed real estate transactions on the online platform Danggn Market skyrocketed more than 220-fold from 268 in 2021 to 59,451 in 2024.
With the market in this state, the once-hot popularity of the licensed real estate agent exam has sharply frozen.
Last year, the number of applicants for the first-tier licensed real estate agent exam stood at 80,387, hitting a 11-year low.
In just four years, the number of applicants plummeted by nearly 60%.
Industry insiders forecast that even if sluggish real estate transactions recover, licensed real estate agents will struggle to survive using traditional methods.
While information such as local market prices, urgent sale details, and development plans used to be the exclusive assets of real estate agents, both buyers and sellers can now easily access such information themselves.
Experts point out that agents must go beyond their simple past roles of introducing sellers and buyers to secure competitiveness, extending their functions to identifying risk factors and guaranteeing transactions on a broader scale.
(Reported by Kim Jiuk | Video edited by Ahn Jun-hyeok | Design by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News)
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