An econometric analysis and forecasting of Seoul office market

Abstract

This study examines and forecasts the Seoul office market, which is going to face a big supply in the next few years. After reviewing several previous studies on the Dynamic model and the Seoul Office market, this thesis applies two structural econometric models to forecast trends of rent, vacancy, and new supply of office space of Seoul Office Market, which is going to face a big supply in the next a few years. The first model has rent and supply equations. The second model is a full model that consists of three simultaneous equations; rent, supply, and absorption equations Empirically, the simple model was tested against time-series data of the Seoul office market since 1975. Rent equation is explained by current office stock, current GDP and past rent and past GDP, both lagging one year. The supply equation explains new office supply by one year lagging completion, five and six years lagging rent and growth of GDP in two previous years. The second model is a full model that consists of three simultaneous equations: rent, supply, and absorption equations based on time-series data since 1991. In this model, rent is impacted by current vacancy rate, past rent and vacancy rate both lagging one year. The supply equation is explained by completion one year ago, five years lagging rent, and past vacancy rate lagging four years, and the absorption equation is expressed by GDP per employment, current GDP, one year ago rent, and occupied stocks. Using estimated models with exogenous supplies for the next six years, ten-year contingent forecasts are made based on three scenarios having different estimated GDP growths. The forecasts for both models demonstrate that untypical supply for next six years will impact office rent negatively in all of the scenarios. In short, the Seoul office market, strongly affected by big supply over demand until 2016, will tend to be become soft or tight during same period before supply goes down and rent reacts. Since late 2010s, however, the market will fully recover from oversupply.