Intergenerational Transfer Structure and Heterogeneous Policy Responses in Seoul Real Estate Gift Transfers

This study analyzes the intergenerational asset transfer structure of real estate gift transfers in Seoul, Korea, and the heterogeneity of policy responses during a period of rapid housing price escalation and intensive tax regulation. The methods include Pearson cross-correlation analysis, cross-correlation functions, mean difference tests, and a Box-Tiao-based intervention regression model with Newey-West standard error and auto regressive moving average (ARMA) error robustness checks. The findings are as follows: First, the correlation between donors in their 60s and donees in their 30s reached 0.983, suggesting that parent-to-child transfer is dominant, whereas the strong female concentration among donees aged 60 years and above points to the existence of intragenerational (spousal) transfers. Second, the intervention regression showed that the 7.10 tax measures triggered a temporary surge (pulse) of +424.6%, whereas the carryover taxation extension to 10 years induced a permanent decline (step) of –61.1%. Donors in their 50s and donees in their 20s demonstrated the most extreme responses, whereas those aged 70 years and above were relatively muted, indicating distinct heterogeneity across generations. Third, even after controlling for policy shocks over 16 years, this study provides the first quantitative evidence of the December gift concentration effect, whereby transfer volumes increased structurally by 82.1% in December. This study is the first to use bidirectional donor-donee data from the Supreme Court Registry Information Portal (2010. 01.–2026. 03.) to analyze the intergenerational structure of gift transfers and the impact of tax policies targeting multi-property owners in Seoul. The findings offer policy implications for developing a capital gains tax exit strategy to mitigate the endowment effect and loss aversion and for refining tax policy across acquisition, holding, and disposition.