Real Estate Auction
Auctions.
The most common way to invest in real estate.
The thing about property, though…
The taxes are brutal. Unless you buy at a serious low,
"It's not easy to turn a profit."
"You mean you can't just buy and sell it like stocks?"
"More or less."
House prices doubled these days! That doesn't mean you actually pocket double. You have to factor that in when you buy. Just like stocks, if you dig hard enough you can find things dirt cheap.
Same goes for real estate.
They're called distress sales. When an owner's circumstances force them to list a property below the surrounding market rate, you can pick it up relatively cheap. And because a quiet deal like that doesn't push up the asking prices around it, it works out nicely.
"If you buy high, the asking prices go up, right?"
"You've got it."
"Ohhh—so in stock terms, that's accumulation."
A property just sold? Doesn't that mean prices are rising? It can rattle the psychology of every household head in the neighborhood.
Accumulation takes know-how, too.
You have to take your time, move slowly, keep a long-term view. But that alone won't fill the target volume.
Eastern District Court of Seoul.
The other method. Auctions. For people in the real estate business, they're pretty standard.
"Whoa—a courthouse…"
"Feeling guilty about something?"
"The opposite! I've just never had a reason to come to a place like this."
Sora swallowed hard. For ordinary people, a courthouse wasn't exactly familiar ground.
Exactly.
These listings weren't out on the open market. The pool of participants was limited. Which meant the odds of snagging a good property…
"…might actually be decent?"
"Right."
"And the prices should be a bit lower than market, too."
"Usually."
Properties that end up in court auction are there because a debtor has no money and the court is forcing a cash conversion. If they could have sold at full price, they never would have landed here—so of course they go cheaper than market.
And so people think…
This is where you buy cheap! Some people keep it that simple. Sure enough, the moment the auction opened—
A stampede.
They surged forward to bid. The war of nerves over landing even one successful bid was ferocious.
"Has the auction started?"
"Yeah."
"This is… not what I pictured."
"Because it's a sealed-bid auction, not an open outcry."
The art auction Sora and I had attended on the cruise ship before had been open outcry—the kind where hands shoot up, the kind you see in movies. Court auctions ran exclusively as sealed-bid auctions. You submitted a bid on the property you wanted. Highest number won.
1. 2019-Ta-Gyeong-30625 — Multi-family Villa
2. 2019-Ta-Gyeong-22263 — Farmland
3. 2019-Ta-Gyeong-24047 — Apartment
The progress scrolled across a TV screen. You could also hear it directly from the bailiff inside the courtroom.
"It says 'case' on there. Kind of ominous…"
"I told you. These are debtors' properties. You think they handed over their own assets with a smile?"
"Ah."
Court auction. You could never forget that this was not a normal way of buying real estate.
Never.
The bidders waited in a knot of anxiety, praying their own bid had come in first.
The bailiff's voice carried through the room. The middle-aged woman who'd won lit up with pure delight.
"Hohoho! Looks like I got it~."
"Congratulations!"
"Ma'am, congratulations!"
"My goodness, you got it so cheap—I'm jealous."
She soaked up the congratulations from the people around her. Fair enough to think she'd just bought a property below market.
"I just looked up that apartment."
"And?"
"The appraisal value is 950 million. So even after taxes, she cleared over 200 million in profit, right?"
"You'd think so."
There was always some idiot who thought exactly that. The same mistake people made when they first touched stocks.
Just because an analyst scribbles a target price of a million won doesn't mean the stock is actually worth a million.
Appraisal values came padded with foam. On top of that, you had to remember they assumed ordinary market conditions.
The auction wrapped up. We hadn't won a single thing—hadn't even tried—and that was the end of it.
"Did we just come to watch?"
"No."
"Then you brought me here to teach me…"
"Why would I."
"Then why the hell did we come, you bastard?"
"This isn't a place you come to win bids."
"?"
She had every right to look confused. Cheap properties everywhere—and we hadn't bought a single one.
This is where you learn that cheap things are cheap for a reason.
You had to walk in knowing that.
The apartment Sora thought could clear a 200-million-won profit—we got in the car and went to see it. District courts covered their local area, so it wasn't far.
"Oh, this looks fine?"
"Does it?"
"You had me so freaked out I thought it was going to be some weird dump…"
It sat against a mountain. Topographically solid. As a real estate location, too—
Not bad.
There was a Dul Mart nearby. The subway station wasn't far either—not quite station-front premium, but the transit was decent enough.
We pulled into the parking lot. Then we went up to the apartment itself. Twelfth floor. No need to even step inside unit 2. The view through the stairwell window said everything.
"There's a cemetery…"
"A place so breezy you won't need the AC even in summer."
"……."
The mountain. Not an ordinary one. Dozens upon dozens of graves were interred there.
If you wanted to be positive, you could call it cemetery-adjacent living.
Live with the ancestors! Die and get buried on the spot! Some people would think that way. Most people did not.
Residents weren't exactly lining up for it. Even if the price sat below nearby apartments.
"Would you buy it?"
"No…"
"Cheap things aren't cheap for no reason."
The units didn't move. And because real estate prices were set by recent transaction comps—
People actually mistook it for a 900-million-won apartment.
Ordinary folks could be forgiven for that. The woman who'd won the bid had probably had her eyes glaze over at the discount, too.
"That's why agents exist."
"Hmm…"
"They set a reasonable price between buyer and seller."
Market mechanics. In the stock market, LPs handled that job—automatically filling empty order books.
Real estate can't do that.
Someone had to pound the pavement. Earning a spread for the work was fair. I had the club members on it. The generous part-time pay had them running over happily—but half of them quit. Real estate work wasn't as easy as it looked.
"But it's not that hard, is it?"
"You think?"
"I only got fooled here because I'd never been. This seems like basic due diligence?"
The difference from stocks. It still might not have clicked for her. This level felt like elementary homework.
That's the baseline. This is only Level 1.
Under normal circumstances, a property like that would fail to sell—it would get passed over.
"So nobody bought it."
"Right."
"That's why you said this isn't a place you come to win bids."
"You're not an idiot."
Good properties got snapped up fast. Meaningful spreads were hard to find. People who came hunting for successful bids were amateurs—or people lighting candles and praying for thin competition.
So instead…
You targeted the failed ones. Every time a court auction failed to sell, the minimum bid dropped twenty percent. Meaning you could buy even cheaper—cheap enough that the property's flaws became worth swallowing.
"Then you spin a good pitch and flip it."
"Who the hell buys an apartment with a cemetery view?"
"They're going to go soon anyway. Tell them moving in just makes the trip more convenient."
"Hey."
The world was wide, and somewhere out there was someone who needed exactly that. You found that person and sold it.
Not something a public institution could do.
Sales strategy. For a capitalist market to turn, you needed freedom and competition. Sora accepted the logic. But something still sat wrong with her—you could see it.
"Well… if I just think of it as business, I get it…"
"Here we are."
"Huh?"
"The reason we came today."
It still looked like easy money, though. The kind of minor complaint only rich people made.
I keep telling you—not every listing is a gem.
Every property that hit the auction block had a story. Getting tangled in someone else's life drained you just by existing.
We arrived at the place we'd actually come for. Per the club members' review, it was pretty solid—minus one problem. And because that problem couldn't be fixed, it had failed three times already.
"Three times?"
"Figure the price has been roughly cut in half."
"Half… even with problems, that's still buyable, isn't it?"
The small stuff the club members were already handling. Even so, there was something they couldn't touch.
Suhyun has her limits, too.
She was still learning the job. She'd hit the wall of what she could manage on her own and sent up an SOS.
"This is it?"
"Should be."
"From the outside it doesn't look like much is wrong…"
A house maybe ten or twenty years old. The villa Sora and I lived in was about the same vintage. The interior had been renovated; the exterior wasn't much different. No afterlife view like that apartment earlier, either. The location was station-adjacent, and there was a university nearby. The more you looked at it, the better it seemed.
"Sir! Sir! We have the vacate order. Please open the door."
A property like that, failed three times—selling for less than half the surrounding prices—because of this.
"C-come in…"
The old iron door opened. What waited inside went beyond anything we'd imagined. Sora squeezed her eyes shut—not from disgust, but because she understood.
"This is the house my husband and I live in."
"Ah. Yes."
"It's under our child's name, you see."
"And you can't reach them?"
"We haven't been able to reach them for some time now."
In the narrow room, a grandfather lay in bed. Only the grandmother could still move around, barely. The rough outline matched the report.
The hardest part of real estate—
"Do we… have to leave the house…?"
—was coming face to face with reality.