IGIS Sells Office Building in Seoul’s Buzzy Seongsu District to Kyobo AIM for $178M

South Korea’s IGIS Asset Management has sold a Seoul office building to Kyobo AIM Asset Management for $178 million, completing a deal that set a new mark for pricing in the capital’s trendy Seongsu district east of downtown.

The transaction for Factorial Seongsu valued the 10-storey property at $8,450 per square metre of floor area, representing an all-time high for office assets in the buzzy district on the north bank of the Han River, IGIS said Thursday in a release. The firm said it acquired the former logistics site in 2020 and executed a ground-up development, delivering a fully stabilised Grade A asset in 2024. 

Located a block away from Seongsu subway station, Factorial Seongsu was fully leased ahead of completion, according to IGIS. The anchor tenant, health and beauty giant CJ Olive Young, occupies 45 percent of the building’s net lettable area, and Hyundai Motor’s Robotics Lab is another key occupier. Factorial Seongsu’s tap-and-control building operating system received an Innovation Award at the CES 2025 trade show.

“This isn’t just a record-breaking sale,” an IGIS representative told Mingtiandi. “It demonstrates how transforming an ageing industrial site into a CES-award-winning smart building can command a historic price premium, even in a challenging market.”

More Projects Ahead

IGIS said Thursday that it plans to replicate the tech-integration strategy of the Seongsu project in future developments across the capital’s central districts.

A prolific trader of Seoul commercial properties, IGIS is South Korea’s largest real estate fund manager, with gross assets under management of $55 billion as of September 2025.

The Korea Economic Daily reported in February 2024 that IGIS was putting up for sale a controlling stake in the firm, including a 12.4 percent interest held by Son Hwaja — the firm’s top shareholder and the widow of founder Kim Daiyoung — and an 11 percent shareholding by senior managing partner Cho Kabjoo and his private company. Shortly after, IGIS announced that it was halting the process of selling the stake to focus on the firm’s operational stability.

Last month, Zhang Lei’s Hillhouse Investment was selected as the preferred bidder to buy IGIS, industry sources told the Korea Herald. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the lead managers for the sale, gave notice that Hillhouse had made an offer of KRW 1.1 trillion ($748 million) to acquire a 98.8 percent stake in the firm, the sources said.

Market Stays Hot

The sale of Factorial Seongsu follows another strong year for office deals in the capital of Asia’s third-largest economy.

Seoul chalked up 41 office transactions valued at close to KRW 13.7 trillion ($9.4 billion) in the first three quarters of 2025, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Office trades accounted for 78.5 percent of investment volume for Seoul commercial real estate during the period, the consultancy said.

Last year’s activity was led by Mirae Asset Management’s sale of Pangyo Tech One Tower to a consortium of Korea Investment & Securities and KakaoBank for a record-breaking KRW 2 trillion ($1.4 billion).

Located south of the capital in the Pangyo area, the 2021-built tower changed hands for the highest-ever transaction price in the history of the country’s office market, according to Cushman & Wakefield, which advised on the sale. The consideration of KRW 10.1 million ($7,095) per square metre set a new mark for Pangyo on a price per unit area basis.