In 2013, the number of foreigners residing in Korea has reached 950,000. It was sharp increase since the 1990s when there were only 60,000 foreign residents. As the Statistics Korea states that this increasing trend will continue, the Korean governmen...
In 2013, the number of foreigners residing in Korea has reached 950,000. It was sharp increase since the 1990s when there were only 60,000 foreign residents. As the Statistics Korea states that this increasing trend will continue, the Korean government has created programs and implemented policies for foreign residents to provide comfortable circumstances to foreign residents.
However, the increase in the number of foreign residents has created “ethnic districts” in urban area, districts that are particularly concentrated with foreigners, and brought with them a mix of both positive and negative influences in regional economy. There has been a diverse set of research in a spatial viewpoint that studies foreigners’ spatial distribution patterns and distribution characteristics, residential conditions, and factors behind why foreigners choose to live in particular regions. In an economic point of view, there have been a few efforts to analyze the influences that an inflow of foreigners brings to the labor market. However, apart from few researches specific to certain regions, there have been no efforts quantify the economic influences that the inflow of foreign residents cause on a metropolitan or regional scale. If foreign residents begin to reside in certain ethnic district, they will consequentially affect the domestic people already residing in local communities and neighborhoods. Hence, it is important to study the economic effects the ethnic districts bring.
This paper analyzes how foreign residents affect housing market by exploring 19 ethnic districts of Seoul metropolitan areas and observes housing sale prices, foreign resident density, and dissimilarity index (residential segregation of foreign residents) through an empirical analysis. The paper also illustrates how nationality varies foreign resident density and dissimilarity index based on the panel random effect model and multi-level model. Main results are as follow.
Analysis on the panel random effect model illustrates that the ratio of foreign residents of the area has positive effect on the average exchange price of the areas’ apartment complexes. As such, I can conclude that although the high number of foreign residents increases the exchange price of the area, more separation between those foreigners and the natives decreases the price of the apartment complex, ultimately negating the positive impact the foreign residents brought to the area. The impact of these two variables show that with 1% increase in the number of foreigner residents, the exchange price of the apartment complex per m2 increases by as low as -23,600 Won (when the separation between the natives and foreigners is clearly indicated; D=1) and as high as +311,700 Won (when there is no separation between the natives and foreigners; D=0). Therefore, considering the current foreigner residence area, the exchange price of each area can increase approximately 2.84% ~ 13.50%.
The result of the analysis on multi-level model shows exactly the same result as the panel random effect model. Because the multi level model assumes probability slope, 1% increase in the number of foreign residents leads the exchange price of the apartment complex per m2 to increase by as low as -1,082,200 Won (when the separation between the natives and foreigners is clearly indicated; D=1) and as high as +1,412,800 Won (when there is no separation between the natives and foreigners; D=0) depending on the degree of separation of residential areas. Most importantly, based on the multi-level model, the estimation value of interaction variable demonstrates negative effect. This means, the higher the degree of separation of residential areas, the lower the marginal effect on the price of the areas. Accordingly, it supports the hypothesis that the residential segregation between foreigners and the natives negatively affects the price of the apartment complex.
Furthermore, with the panel random effect model and multi-level model, the effects of nationality differences are found. Particularly, both models show that Chinese residential area has positive effect on the price of the apartment, possibly due to the shared culture and similar languages.
This study is the first empirical research that focuses on the current domestic housing market with regards to the rapid increase of foreigners and how the foreign population is affecting the regional housing market. It is important to understand that the results of the study may help the current government to improve policies on living environments of foreign concentrated areas and provide many important implications regarding the living areas of the foreign population. However, during the analysis process of this study, none consideration of the time lag by time series data and lack of research regarding living areas separated by nationality served as limitations. For the future studies, more in-depth results are expected if those limitations are better represented.