The total real estate investments of South Korean conglomerates slid slightly to 39.6 trillion won ($33.80 billion) as of end-2018, corporate business performance reviewer CEO Score said Tuesday.

The aggregated business and audit reports of 59 conglomerates showed that Lotte Group topped the list ahead of Samsung Group, it said.

Lotte Group had 4.4 trillion won worth of real estate holdings for investment purposes as of last year, up 12.6 percent on-year. It spent 70.2 billion won in acquiring more property, and transferred over 400 billion won worth of properties that it was using for its operations to its investment portfolio. 

The survey only considers real estate held for investment purposes, and not property a group owns for its regular operations.

Samsung Group slid to the second place after selling over 1.2 trillion won worth of real estate owned by subsidiaries Samsung C&T Corp., Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance.

Rounding out the top 10 were Shinsegae Group with 3.2 trillion won in investment property, followed by Hanwha Group (3.1 trillion won), GS Group (2.7 trillion won), KT (1.6 trillion won), NongHyup Financial Group (1.6 trillion won), Daelim Group (1.5 trillion won), LG Corp. (1.5 trillion won) and Kyobo Life Insurance (1.3 trillion won).

In terms of individual companies, Samsung Life Insurance topped the list with real estate investments worth 3.7 trillion won. Hwanwha Life Insurance, Shinsegae Central City, Kyobo Life Insurance and KT Estate were also found to have a real estate portfolio of 1 trillion won each.

Doosan Group saw the largest increase in its real estate investment portfolio, rising from 153 billion won in 2017 to 542 billion won -- as a result of merging with Doota Mall in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul.

Samsung C&T Corp. saw the biggest decline, shedding 625 billion won after selling its Seocho Building. Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance also shed 532 billion won and 69 billion won worth of investment properties, respectively.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)