Korea Appraisal Board (KAB) President Suh Jong-dae said his board will strengthen its public responsibilities, including feasibility studies, real estate surveys and statistics, while handing over its appraisal business to the private sector. 

KAB President Suh summed KAB up as a public institution charged with managing the Korean real estate market. 

KAB was established in 1969 with the goal of appraising the values of collateral owned by financial institutions, but the board has begun to withdraw from the private appraisal market, including appraising the values of collateral owned by financial institutions, in 2008 as large  privately-owned appraisal companies popped up in 2007. 

Currently, KAB is responsible for only appraisals related to the public sector, including land compensation for public projects. The appraisal business related to the public sector, to be transferred to the private sector, accounts for 35 percent of the board’s total annual revenues. KAB has decided to strengthen the board’s management of the real estate market, including feasibility studies, in return for its withdrawal from the appraisal business. This move is in line with the government’s plan to advance the appraisal market to the levels of advanced countries and ramp up KAB’s public responsibilities related to management of the real estate market. 

KAB’s mainstay businesses of real estate management accounts for 50 percent of the board’s annual total revenues. They include the board’s market trend survey projects, and real estate value information management projects such as prices of real estate and public housing information 

While delivering a message at a ceremony to launch the 2015 business year at its headquarters in Daegu on Jan. 2, KAB President Suh called for his board to be armed with solidarity, greater vision and a more aggressive spirit. 

KAB introduced a basic survey system for appraising official land prices, based on IT and databases, KAB President Suh said. The move served as an opportunity to overhaul the 25-year-old high cost, low efficiency, public filing of official land prices, and it saved some 12 billion won in taxpayer money and established a foundation to advance public filings of official land prices to levels of advanced countries.?

In the real estate appraisal field, KAB established infrastructure for providing quality information to the business community by releasing a publication on working guidelines of appraisal and evaluation to improve trustworthiness and ramping up expertise and integrating real transaction prices, aerial maps and study materials into the appraisal and evaluation information system.?

The board expanded the appraisal sampling assessment, considered a stringent compensation evaluation, and conducted a thorough feasibility study to correct the long-standing malpractices of slipshod appraisals and evaluations, such as the controversy over Hannam The Hill.?

In the real estate stat field, KAB expanded jeonse (a rental deposit system) and weolse (monthly rental fees) statistics infrastructure by putting on public notice real apartment jeonse-woelse conversion rates to stabilize low-income households’ livelihoods, and took over the real estate transaction management system to build a regular verification system and correct real estate malpractices such as “down contract” (false transaction documents).

In the compensation agency area, KAB has linked its compensation system and the public compensation information support system, operated by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), allowing the utilization of advanced spatial information and “informatizing” all compensation processes. The board has established itself as an institution specializing in compensation agencies by carrying out such mega-orders as the compensation agency of the Seoul-Munsan Expressway and the Daedong High-Tech industrial Complex.

Exploring new businesses, KAB played a part in a plan to enhance the soundness of real estate collateral loans extended by the National Credit Union Federation of Korea. The board also took over the public housing management information system and went to all lengths to expand to 47 the number of apartment management costs categories, which are put on public notice in order to enhance public housing occupants’ satisfaction.?

In the green building sector, KAB has been designated as one of the building energy efficiency rating certification institutions. The board built a one-stop service system to certify newly-built structures and a platform for long-term growth by hiring experienced manpower and revamping work processes.?

These efforts and achievements have earned outside recognition.?

KAB’s standing is on the rise as the board ranked 1st in an integrity survey conducted by the Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC), won the Excellence Award for Future Preparedness, the Cyber Security Excellence Award, and the Enterprise Architecture (EA) Award, and topped the list of MOLIT-affiliated organizations in terms of Enterprise Architecture (EA).