Office-tel Lottery in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province

A long line of applicants has already started forming in front of the office in Sangnam-dong and the three bank branches assigned for registration on the afternoon of June 12, a day before the scheduled date.

People brought tents and mats to secure their position in line and stayed overnight on the street.

Since the application was available for non-residents of Changwon, people from Seoul and metropolitan areas rented a bus to get there.

The Dong office was crammed with people trying to get documents for application such as the copy of resident registration and the certificate of personal seal impression.

As the number of applicants was much larger than expected, the company cancelled the original registration hours from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on June 13 and received applications till 4:30 p.m. on June 14 without closing.

The number of applicants was 52,000, and the total amount of money gathered reached approximately 1.5 trillion won. The range of application fee is from 20 million won to 100 million won according to the different sizes.

Such heat is due to office-tels being approved before the law to restrict the resale of the occupancy right was taken into effect. In addition, there are no limitations for applications, and the winners are to be determined by lot.

Recently, the price of large size apartments in Changwon has exceeded 10 million won per pyeong, which boosted people’s expectations for marginal profit since its price per pyeong was around 8.45 million won.

The office-tel will be constructed as a large-scale multi-complex with a hotel, shopping mall, and convention center. It will have 1,000 rooms of 43 to 103 pyeong, and there will be multi-story buildings with 32 to 43 floors in the complex.

Sang-Rok Lee myzodan@donga.com