Koreans would need to save their entire salaries for about 14 years without spending a single won to buy a home in the capital, government data showed Monday.
According to a survey of 61,000 households released by the Land Ministry, the median housing price-to-income ratio, or PIR, stood at 13.9 last year. The PIR is a key indicator of housing affordability and suggests it would take 13.9 years of income to purchase a home.
After Seoul, the regions with the highest PIR were Sejong (8.2), Gyeonggi Province (6.9), Daegu (6.7) and Incheon (6.6).
Real Estate 114, a real estate data portal, said the average price of an apartment of all sizes in Seoul was about 1.3 billion won ($891,000) last year, which had risen to 1.5 billion won as of October.
This figure, however, was not used in the ministry’s calculation because the survey was based on owner-occupied households. The ministry did not specify the figures for housing prices or monthly income used in the PIR calculation.
The ministry also found that 43.9 percent of newlyweds lived in homes they owned, with 73.4 percent of them in apartments.
shinjh@heraldcorp.com
