It's Not Cheaper Than an Apartment — It Isn't One: Deogeun Eileen's Garden Central

"On the Han River, ten minutes by car from Sangam DMC, brand-new — and a few hundred million won cheaper than the apartments nearby." That's the one-liner making the rounds about Deogeun Eileen's Garden Central. The location story is close to true. Deogeun-dong, Deogyang-gu, Goyang, Gyeonggi; about ten minutes by car from Sangam DMC; on the Han River; about six minutes to Gangbyeonbuk-ro via the north end of Gayang Bridge. So far, all true.

The problem is the comparison. Central is a residential officetel — an officetel built and lived in like an apartment, what Koreans call an "apartel." Three towers across Blocks 8, 9, and 10; floor areas of 78, 84, and 112㎡; 210 units in all. The developer and builder is IS Dongseo, often confused with Bando Construction's "Ubora" — but the two are separate firms whose founders are brothers. There is no official "Phase 1/Phase 2" label, so I treat Blocks 8/9 (144 units) and Block 10 (66 units) together as Central as a whole. "Cheaper than an apartment" lines up two things of a different species from the start. An officetel being cheaper than an apartment is normal. So the real question is just one. Is that discount enough?

First, Unpack "Cheap"

An officetel carries costs an apartment does not. But the figure usually cited — "4.6% acquisition tax versus 1%" — is overstated. In the KRW 0.9–1.2bn range where Central sits, a single-home apartment is also taxed above the KRW 0.9bn threshold, so it is effectively 3%, leaving the real gap at roughly 1.6 percentage points. The heavier costs lie elsewhere. As a non-residential property its mortgage LTV is unfavorable (when bought to live in on a loan); its usable-area ratio is lower, so the same nominal size yields less floor you actually use; it ranks behind in the subscription and tax systems; and it is harder to resell.

Table: The structure of the officetel discount. A large share of "cheaper than an apartment" is the price of these penalties. Source — general real-estate acquisition-tax and mortgage rules.

There is one more bill the nominal discount never captures. Use a residential officetel as a home and it counts toward your household's home count. For someone who already owns one apartment, that can break the single-home capital-gains-tax exemption (on the first KRW 1.2bn) and the comprehensive real-estate tax break. It is not on the price tag, but it attaches to your entire ownership structure.

What's Expensive Isn't Every Unit — It's the "River View"

Whether the remaining discount is enough varies unit by unit. The benchmark is the price you pay buying the developer's unsold inventory today. From the sister complex "Han River" 84㎡ offering prices (river view KRW 0.974–1.245bn / non-river view KRW 0.756–0.874bn), Central is estimated to run about KRW 0.1bn lower. At the developer-inventory purchase price, that puts river-view units at roughly KRW 0.87–1.14bn and non-river-view at roughly KRW 0.65–0.77bn. Note that the offering prices and the apartment transactions below differ in timing and type, so this is an approximate comparison.

The expensive end is the top of the river-view tier. The same 84㎡ in a new Deogeun apartment set a record high at KRW 1.28bn (DMC Dietre Han River, 2026-01), and an older complex in Sangam across the river went for KRW 1.25bn (World Cup Park Complex 7, 2025-10) — and Central's top river-view units climb right up into the KRW 1.1bn range. The product is a notch inferior, yet the price closes in on apartments in the KRW 1.2bn range. Add that the real substitute for a river-view officetel is a river-view apartment, and if this price actually trades near the asking estimate, the discount is thin. There is, though, an honest counterargument. That KRW 1.1bn range is only an estimate — the sister complex's offering price marked down by KRW 0.1bn — not a figure printed by an actual transaction. In a weak market, for a complex where developer inventory is still circulating and not a single transaction has printed, the real clearing price may be lower than the estimate, and then the discount actually widens. Which way it goes, only the first transaction tells. (Because the usable-area ratio is low, adjusting per pyeong narrows the gap somewhat.)

Table: 84㎡ comparison. Central is an estimated developer-inventory purchase price — the sister complex "Han River" offering price marked down about KRW 0.1bn; the apartments are actual transactions. Offering price versus actual transaction differ in timing and type, so this is approximate. Source — StraightNews (Han River offering, 2024-06) · Hogangnono (Deogeun, 2026-01) · MOLIT transaction data (Sangam, 2025-10).

Where Capital Gains Are Blocked, What's Left Is Cash Flow

Central's Blocks 8/9 and 10 are past roughly a year since move-in, yet barely any sale or jeonse (lump-sum-deposit lease) transactions show up in MOLIT or Hogangnono records. The temptation is to read this straight as "a liquidity failure," but two things have to be cleared away first. With developer inventory still being sold first-come and the first round not yet absorbed, light secondary turnover is structurally to be expected. On top of that, within the first year after move-in, the heavy short-term capital-gains tax chills transactions in itself. So I nail the conclusion to the weak side. The data does not prove liquidity. But it does not prove failure either.

Even so, the gap-investment play — using jeonse leverage to chase capital gains — has a narrow stage. Its engine is the gap, the sale price minus the jeonse deposit, but with no jeonse transactions or jeonse-to-price ratio on record and a weak jeonse market, there is no gap to engineer. (The non-residential LTV seen earlier is a constraint on buying to live in on a loan, unrelated to gap investment.) In Q3 2025, officetels nationwide ran −0.39% on sales and −0.20% on jeonse by the Korea Real Estate Board, with only monthly rent up, at +0.30%. The weight has shifted from capital gains to monthly rent.

Yet the same ledger also supports the bull case. Non-river-view units at KRW 0.65–0.77bn are nominally KRW 0.4–0.5bn cheaper than nearby apartments in the KRW 1.2bn range; monthly rents are in an upswing; and across the river sits the rental demand of Sangam DMC (one- and two-person households wanting to live near work in broadcasting and IT). Goyang was left out of the regulated zones under the October 15 measures, so it is unregulated; the base rate is 2.5%, late in the cutting cycle; and the Daejang–Hongdae line's Deogeun Station is laid in as a tailwind too. The direction is clear. Whether the rental yield actually exceeds the non-residential loan rate, though, there is no data for, so I leave it as an item to watch rather than assert.

The arithmetic, too, splits by viewpoint. "The river-view discount is insufficient" is the investor's calculation. For someone buying proximity to work in Sangam and the utility of living in a new build, a different value is assigned, one apart from per-pyeong price and liquidity. The same listing yields a different answer depending on whether you read it as an investment asset or use it as a place to live.

So What Should You Watch?

I would not approach Central for capital gains. The top of the river-view tier, if it trades at the asking estimate, sits up against apartment prices with a thin discount, and complex-level transaction data does not yet prove liquidity. If investment value holds, it comes from cash flow, not capital gains — and only when a purchase price meaningfully discounted off developer inventory or a distressed sale, and the monthly rent leaning on Sangam's rental demand, both hold it up. The opening of the Daejang–Hongdae line's Deogeun Station is upside laid on top of that (the main-line groundbreaking ceremony was held at the end of 2025, the new Deogeun Station was confirmed in 2024-10, and the target opening is the second half of 2031). That stage is the non-river-view, the nominally cheap one. The very segment the piece marked down for an excessive discount is the lead in the cash-flow scenario.

The signals to watch ahead are clear. Whether the first transactions to appear in Central's Blocks 8/9 and 10 land in the river-view or non-river-view band is the first signal of price discovery, and whether the first-come sale of developer inventory ends is the gauge of whether the backlog is clearing. If the gap between the officetel monthly-rent index and the sale index stays wide, the cash-flow phase is continuing; and the actual groundbreaking of Deogeun Station (Mapo compensation delays being the variable) and whether Goyang gets pulled into the regulated zones are the last variables.

Marketing calls out the location's upside but answers nothing about the outcome at the exit. Who is billed for the cost of this discount, and when, cannot be known at the point of entry. Only at the exit, once actual transactions accumulate, does the market answer after the fact. Add to that the invisible bills — like the home-count inclusion — and taking the visible discount means signing an invisible ledger in return. That ledger's balance may be filled by the non-river-view's monthly rent, or emptied by the river-view's price.

This is analysis, not investment advice. With complex-specific transactions effectively absent, offering prices and market values were approximated using the sister complex and nearby comparators, and the jeonse-to-price ratio and gap could not be computed, so they were treated only at the level of signals.