Seoul
Who rents here, who houses them, and who funds that.
Nine boards — seven generated from Remarble Earth — in the order the question is asked: who rents, where visitors go, what gets built, who operates, who funds them, where it sits, and where visitors stay. Free to read; exploring the operator map building by building is for members, and membership is free.
Operator profiles
Operators profiled in depth
In-depth profileWecostayWECO STAY
Flexible living
The company that defined flexible living in Seoul — profitable, on its own numbers
- operating assets in Seoul
- 7E
- units across those assets
- 710E
- rooms nationwide
- 836O
E verified against Remarble Earth · O reported by the operator
Read the profile →
In-depth profileStayes
Student housing
Rebuilding Seoul's campus belt one old building at a time — studios for students and young renters
- operating assets in Seoul
- 3E
- IRR, the Changcheon case study
- 68%O
- target IRR per project
- 20%O
E verified against Remarble Earth · O reported by the operator
Read the profile →
In-depth profileDeohamWE STAY
Social development
Korea's social developer: it builds the community first, then stays to run it
- WE STAY homes delivered
- 1,030O
- homes at Noryangjin, completing 2028
- 397O
- WE STAY total project cost
- ₩360.8bnO
E verified against Remarble Earth · O reported by the operator
Read the profile →
01
Demand: more households in a shrinking city
Residents down, households up, one-person households up fastest — the cohort that rents.
One-person households
share of all households
39.9%
2024 · +10.4pp since 2015
Households
registered, all sizes
4.16M
2024 · +9.9% since 2015
Residents
registered population
9.60M
2024 · -6.8% since 2015
Between 2015 and 2024 Seoul lost 6.8% of its residents and gained 9.9% more households; one-person households went from 29.5% to 39.9% of the city.
02
Inbound demand: visitors and students
On top of that resident base, two inbound layers — both at records, as their publishers report them.
International students
enrolled at Korean universities · Ministry of Education
253K
2025, a record · +21.3% y/y
Foreign visitors
arrivals to Korea · Korea Tourism Organization
18.94M
2025, a record · +8.2% vs the 2019 peak of 17.50M
Students in Seoul
the largest concentration in Korea
82,911
2025 · QS Best Student Cities #1, 2026 and 2027
The trough
arrivals at the bottom of the pandemic
0.97M
2021 · average stay 7.8 days
03
Where foreign visitors actually go
The same inbound demand placed inside the city: every district by how deep its foreign-visitor base runs against how fast it is growing, from roaming data — visitor-days, not bookings.
Hover over a district's dot for detail, or tap to pin it. Arrow keys work too.
① Momentum core
3deep demand, above-average growth
- Seongdong22 · +57.4%
- Gangnam40 · +25.9%
- Yongsan37 · +25.9%
② Established core
8deep demand, below-average growth
- Jongno50 · +23.5%
- Songpa14 · +23.3%
- Gangseo19 · +22.7%
- Seocho18 · +21.8%
- Jung-gu100 · +21.2%
- Mapo45 · +20.9%
- Yeongdeungpo18 · +19.2%
- Seodaemun15 · +18.1%
③ Emerging
7small base, above-average growth
- Gwangjin7 · +37.0%
- Seongbuk5 · +34.6%
- Gangbuk2 · +31.5%
- Eunpyeong3 · +27.6%
- Dongdaemun7 · +26.1%
- Gangdong3 · +25.5%
- Gwanak5 · +25.1%
④ Peripheral
7small base, below-average growth
- Jungnang2 · +21.0%
- Geumcheon3 · +17.3%
- Dongjak5 · +16.3%
- Yangcheon2 · +15.6%
- Dobong1 · +15.5%
- Guro6 · +13.9%
- Nowon2 · +11.9%
Each district is plotted by depth (foreign visitor-days, Jung-gu = 100) against growth on the prior year. The dividing lines sit at a depth of 10, the natural break between Songpa (14) and Gwangjin (7), and at Seoul’s own growth of +24.0%. The quadrants are Remarble’s framing of KTO’s series; KTO does not publish them.
Jung-gu — Myeongdong, its heart — remains the absolute centre, 2.62 million visitor-days in July 2026 alone, but grows with the city. The story is Seongdong: the one district pairing deep demand with breakaway growth, +57% on the prior year, with Gangnam and Yongsan the only others compounding above Seoul’s pace from a deep base. The clusters on the operator map below sit where the right half of this chart is.
04
Supply: permits for small units have collapsed
The units those households need — permits for the housing types the living sector builds, one column per year.
2021
permits, nine small-unit types
1,278
2026
permits, same types
308
-76% vs 2021
Officetel
a key living-sector building type
59
from 218 in 2021
Lowest year
in the register
2024
200 permits
1,278 permits in 2021, 308 in 2026 — a fall of 75.9% while households grew 9.9% from 2015; officetel 218 to 59.
05
Operator map
Who houses that demand today: every asset attributable to a named living operator. Filtering by operator, and each building’s name, address and units, open to members — free.
Of 131 assets on file, 122 are operating and 9 announced but not yet operating (hollow markers). The map plots 117; the 14 not plotted have no coordinate, 7 of them announced. Filtering by operator, and each building’s name, address and units, are for members.
06
Operator directory
The operators behind those dots. Asset counts are verified against Remarble Earth and include assets an operator has secured but not yet opened, marked as such; unverified figures show as not available. The cards are shuffled on every visit, so no position is a ranking. Full profiles open to signed-in members, free; partner profiles are shared through Remarble.
Union Place
Logo use not yet cleared
4
operating assets in Seoul
94 units · 1 of 4 assets report one
Trustay
Logo use not yet cleared
3
operating assets in Seoul
19 units · 3 of 3 assets report one
Stayes
Logo shown on the profile
3
operating assets in Seoul
unit counts not yet supplied
Wecostay
Logo shown on the profile
7
operating assets in Seoul
710 units · 7 of 7 assets report one
Woozoo
Logo use not yet cleared
4
operating assets in Seoul
unit counts not yet supplied
MGRV
Logo use not yet cleared
10
assets in Seoul — 4 operating, 6 not yet open
653 units · 3 of 4 operating assets report one
Commontown
Logo use not yet cleared
3
operating assets in Seoul
unit counts not yet supplied
UHC
Logo use not yet cleared
17
operating assets in Seoul
unit counts not yet supplied
Ayla
Logo use not yet cleared
2
operating assets in Seoul
148 units · 2 of 2 assets report one
KT Living
Logo use not yet cleared
14
assets in Seoul — 13 operating, 1 not yet open
4,449 units · 13 of 13 operating assets report one
Current Page
Logo use not yet cleared
3
operating assets in Seoul
14 units · 1 of 3 assets report one
Deoham
Logo from the operator's own site
1
asset in Seoul — 0 operating, 1 not yet open
unit counts not yet supplied
DDPS
Logo use not yet cleared
15
operating assets in Seoul
2,770 units · 11 of 15 assets report one
GHPartners
Logo use not yet cleared
18
operating assets in Seoul
4,289 units · 16 of 18 assets report one
Nonce Foundation
Logo use not yet cleared
3
operating assets in Seoul
unit counts not yet supplied
SLP
Logo use not yet cleared
5
operating assets in Seoul
880 units · 4 of 5 assets report one
Weave Living
Logo use not yet cleared
7
assets in Seoul — 6 operating, 1 not yet open
539 units · 4 of 6 operating assets report one
Cove
Logo use not yet cleared
2
operating assets in Seoul
unit counts not yet supplied
Homes
Logo use not yet cleared
10
operating assets in Seoul
812 units · 9 of 10 assets report one
07
Capital behind the sector
Who backs those operators: named investor against operator, one cell per investor–deal link. Operators are codes on the ladder; the ledger beneath names them in full for Remarble Earth subscribers.
Operatorsdeals each · named in full in Remarble Earth
Three investors — GIC, CPP Investments and Morgan Stanely [sic] — hold 18 of the 40 links, and 9 of the 13 back a single operator.
Remarble Earth · subscribers
The deal ledger is for Remarble Earth subscribers.
All 42 recorded deals, line by line: capital and vehicle, asset and address, strategy, operator and asset manager, closing month, and consideration where it is on file — with every party named in full.
A free Remarble sign-in opens Insights; the ledger is part of an Earth subscription.
08
Where the institutional stock is, by district
The assets from the operator map, directory and capital above, counted per district — where the operators and their capital have actually landed, and where they have not.
- Jung-gu20
- Gangnam15
- Mapo11
- Yeongdeungpo11
- Dongdaemun7
- Jongno7
- Seocho7
- Gwangjin5
- Seodaemun5
- Yongsan5
- Geumcheon4
- Gwanak4
- 13 more districts on the map · none yet: Dongjak, Gangseo, Nowon
Jung-gu
the district with the most assets
20
16% of 122 operating assets
Top three districts
Jung-gu, Gangnam, Mapo
38%
46 of 122 assets
Districts covered
with at least one operator asset
22 of 25
none yet: Dongjak, Gangseo, Nowon
Counting unit
one building on one parcel = one asset
122
operating assets only; units counted where the operator reports them
09
Lodging: where visitors stay
Where the inbound visitors counted above sleep — operating lodging licences by district, every class from homestays to tourist hotels.
Urban foreign guesthouse
a resident letting rooms to foreign tourists in the home they live in
7,255
68% of 10,629 licences
Mapo
the district with the most licences
2,081
20% of Seoul’s licences
Hotels and hostels
tourist hotels, all grades, plus hostels
705
55,871 rooms · 89% of counted rooms
Rooms counted
across the licences that report a room count
62,763
from 4,684 of 10,629 · no Seoul total exists
For operators
Join the ecosystem spreading better places to live across Seoul.
Seoul needs more homes worth choosing — rooms people want to live in, run by operators who know how. Remarble is building the ecosystem that spreads them: operators with the product, institutional capital to scale it, and the data that lets both see the same city. Operators who join are profiled on the Seoul reference map, verified against Remarble Earth, and put in front of the investors who read it.
The boards themselves are generated from Earth and rank on the record alone — joining never moves an operator up one.