In Seoul, the period required to save for a home without spending any salary has been found to take 13 years as of last year. The impact of high interest rates explains the decrease from 15.3 years a year ago to 13 years last year.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport released the results of the '2023 Housing Conditions Survey' on the 27th. This is based on individual interviews conducted with a nationwide sample of 61,000 households.
Last year, the Price Income Ratio (PIR) for owner-occupied households in Seoul was studied to be 13 times the median income. The PIR signifies the time required to save for a home without spending salary. Last year's PIR decreased to 13 times, down from 15.3 times in 2022. The metropolitan area and major cities also saw declines, dropping from 9.3 times to 8.5 times and from 6.8 times to 6.3 times, respectively.
The decline in apartment selling prices last year, due to factors such as high interest rates, appears to have influenced the decrease in the PIR.
The PIR is calculated based on housing prices surveyed every June. According to the Korea Real Estate Board, the apartment sales price index for Seoul (June 2021=100) fell from 104.1 in June 2022 to 97.7 last June.
The place with the next highest PIR after Seoul was Sejong at 8.7 times, followed by Gyeonggi at 7.4 times and Daejeon at 7.1 times. The only places that saw an increase in PIR last year were North Gyeongsang at 3.4 times and South Gyeongsang at 4.5 times.
Last year, the national home ownership rate was 60.7%, a decrease of 0.6 percentage points from the record high of 61.3% in 2022, the highest since statistics began in 2006.
In the past year, the home ownership rate in the metropolitan area dropped from 55.8% to 55.1%. In major cities, it declined from 62.8% to 62.3%, while in rural areas it fell from 69.1% to 68.6%. The self-occupancy rate, which indicates the proportion of households living in owned dwellings, decreased by 0.1 percentage points to 57.4%. The proportion of renting households remained the same at 38.8%.
The time taken to secure a first home last year was 7.7 years, which is longer than the previous year (7.4 years). The average housing period for all households also extended to 8 years from 7.9 years in the previous year. The proportion of households indicating the need to own a home was 87.3%, down from 89.6% the previous year.