Same apartment, three prices. The article says "official price of 500 million won." Open a property app and it shows an "asking price of 900 million." The guy next door says he "sold for 700 million." Five hundred million, nine hundred, seven hundred — a 400-million gap over the same slab of concrete. So who's lying?

Nobody is. A property simply carries several prices at once, each built for a different job: the price for taxing it, the price for lending against it, the price an actual deal closed at, and the price someone is asking. They don't move together. Once you split the four apart, those confusing numbers snap into place. One at a time.

Official price — the number the government set to tax you

Start with the one that sits lowest, the official price. The government determines and publishes it once a year. Land gets a published land price, detached houses get an assessed house price, and apartments and other multi-unit homes get a published multi-unit housing price. Three names, one job: it's the basis for taxes and various levies.

Holding taxes like property tax and the comprehensive real estate tax are calculated from this official price, not from what the market actually paid. It also feeds welfare thresholds like health insurance premiums and basic pension eligibility. Since it's the government's yardstick for collecting tax, it tends to sit lower than the real market level, and the government nudges it with a target realization rate — what percentage of market value it aims to reflect.

Here's the term that trips people up because it sounds so similar: the standard market price. The national tax authority mainly uses it for things like capital gains tax when an actual market value is hard to pin down. Inheritance and gift taxes work a little differently — in principle they're assessed at market value, like a real transaction price or an appraisal, and only fall back on administrative prices like the official price when market value is hard to determine. One more thing: for homes and apartments, the standard market price is in practice the same number as the official price (the individual or collective housing price). The tax authority sets a separate standard market price mainly for properties that have no official price at all, like officetels and commercial units. Either way, they share one trait — both are administrative prices invented for taxation.

Appraised value — an expert's verdict for loans and auctions

Next, the appraised value. A licensed appraiser evaluates what a specific property is worth at a particular moment and assigns the figure. Unlike the official price, which the government stamps neighborhood-wide, this one pinpoints a single home — pulling together its location, size, floor, condition, and nearby transaction records.

The appraised value shows up mostly in these arenas.

• Loans — when a bank lends against a home as collateral, the appraised value sets how much it will lend. The loan-to-value ratio (LTV) is multiplied by the appraised value to get the limit.
• Auctions — the starting price for a property at a court auction is based on its appraised value.
• Compensation and disputes — it's also used where an objective value is needed, like land-expropriation compensation or property division.

The appraised value tries to hug the transaction price, but it can drift from the real market depending on when and how it was done. That's why the same home can carry a slightly different number depending on which bank or which appraiser is looking.

Transaction price — where money actually changed hands

If the previous two are administrative or evaluative numbers, the transaction price is the real one. A buyer and seller agreed, signed, and money genuinely crossed the table. When a property is traded, the law requires it to be reported within a set period, and that reported value is disclosed as the transaction price.

Why does it matter? Because it's the figure closest to reality. The official price sits low because it's for taxes, and the asking price has a spoonful of the seller's hopes mixed in. The transaction price is the record that says "at this price, the property actually changed hands." Look at where the last few deals in the same complex closed and you get a rough fix on where a home stands.

But it has traps. Personally this is the part I'm most careful about: a deal is days or weeks old, so there's a lag from "now." Even the same floor area swings with floor, orientation, and renovation condition, and a single rushed sale can land unusually low or high. So one deal alone will fool you. Read it as a trend across several.

Asking price and market price — what's quoted versus the market's rough guess

The asking price is the figure a seller quotes — "this is what I want for it." Most listing prices on property apps and in agencies are asking prices. They carry the seller's expectations and some negotiating room, so deals often close below them. When the market's hot, sales land right near the asking price; when it's cold, well below it.

The market price blends those asking prices with recent transaction prices into a ballpark the market settles on: "this size in this neighborhood goes for roughly this much." It's less a single price than an averaged feel gathered from many signals.

So the four prices tend to line up in roughly this order.

1. Bottom — the official price, for taxes
2. Next — the appraised value, the basis for loans and auctions
3. Closer to reality — the transaction price
4. Top, quoted highest — the asking price

Of course the order can flip depending on market conditions, so it's not an absolute rule. It's just a big-picture way to grasp the character of each price.

How to dig up transaction prices yourself (the concept)

Transaction prices aren't a secret — anyone can pull them from a public system. On the government-run real transaction price disclosure system, pick a region, a complex, and a date range, and reported deals show up. Private property apps grab the same data and lay it out more cleanly.

Check these three alongside the numbers and they read far more honestly.

• When the deal happened — old deal or recent one
• Exclusive floor area and floor — even in the same complex, different sizes and floors sit in different price ranges
• Number of deals — a lone transaction, or several clustered at a similar price

To stop being rattled by the four numbers stuck to one home, just remember who made each price and what for. Taxes mean the official price, loans mean the appraised value, real deals mean the transaction price, a quote means the asking price. With these four rulers in hand, your eye for reading property numbers gets noticeably sharper.