Apartment Prices in Seoul Start to Rise Again

Apartment prices in Seoul are slowly rising again, the latest data suggest.

Real estate app Zigbang analyzed 2,204 apartment sales in April and found that 46.1 percent went at higher prices than the last time, while 39.5 percent still sold cheaper.

Last October, 69 percent of apartments sold at a lower prices than they had been bought as interest rates soared. But when the government eased housing loan-related restrictions this year, the proportion fell to 47.1 percent in February and below 40 percent last month.

A similar trend was spotted in 17 other regions including Sejong administrative city, Gyeonggi Province, Daejeon and Jeju Island.

Amid forecasts that the housing market is improving, the BOK decided to freeze the benchmark interest rate at 3.5 percent on Thursday although it slashed this year's growth forecast from 1.6 percent to 1.4 percent amid a slowdown in exports and rising inflation.

The rate has been frozen since February, but Thursday's decision further widened the gap with the U.S. Federal Reserve's key rate to a historic 1.75 percentage points, sparking fears of a capital flight from Korea.