<Anchor> This is a
friendly economic time. Today (16th), I will be with reporter Kim Hye-min. We talk about real estate a lot these days, but the price is going up a lot. So, the time it takes to get my house done has been greatly increased.
<Reporter>
That's right. Although apartment transactions are rare these days, once they are sold, the price rises sharply.
Although the government is trying to keep house prices down, the buying trend is not easily dampened. In the second half of last year, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport commissioned a survey of the living conditions of Koreans using 50,000 households as a sample.
Among them, PIR, that is, the ratio of house price to annual income, was examined once. What it is, is the median house price divided by the median annual household income.
It refers to the period of time it takes to build a house by collecting a monthly salary and not spending any.
The national PIR is 5 years and 6 months. The metropolitan area takes eight years. The national figure is very slightly to the right, but the metropolitan area was 6 years and 9 months in 2019, so it made a big jump last year.
<Anchor>
By the way, I don't know what the salary of reporter Kim is, but I don't know how much it was based on, but can I buy a house in the metropolitan area in 8 years? Comparing the price increase these days, I don't understand it very well.
<Reporter>
Yes. I didn't understand either. But there were several hidden reasons for this. The first uses the median price when calculating the PIR above. I told you this.
The median price is the value in the middle of the list in order of price. Because it is not an averaged price, it is relatively less affected by expensive housing and high-income households.
Also, real estate prices have risen sharply, especially in Seoul. In the outskirts of the metropolitan area or provinces, there are still many places where house prices are relatively cheap.
However, this time, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced only the metropolitan area and the whole country, excluding Seoul statistics. So, the period was lower than the feeling.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport did not continue to omit Seoul statistics. Until 2017, Seoul's PIR was also included, but Seoul statistics were excluded after that, saying that the Seoul Metropolitan Government would release the final result separately.
<Anchor>
This is because Seoul statistics are missing, so there is a slight misunderstanding. So, if there are any survey results based on Seoul apartment prices?
<Reporter> In
fact, apartment prices in Seoul are rising by an unusually large amount. So, I am most interested in PIR in the Seoul area. It is a meaningful data, but there are some critics of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for omitting this.
Although the investigation method is a little different, KB Real Estate, a public and private institution, continues to release data based on Seoul.
As of March of this year, the ratio of house price to annual income in Seoul was 17.8 times. This means that you can buy a house only if you haven't paid your monthly salary for over 17 years. It is the highest level since 2008 when this statistic was compiled.
The statistics released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport are based on the second half of last year. So let's take a look at the statistics. The PIR of Seoul was 14.8 to 16.8 times.
So, for 14 to 16 years, you have to save up your monthly salary to buy a house. It is very different from the statistics released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for the metropolitan area and national standards.
<Anchor> It
really is. But since this is the metropolitan area, you are talking about Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon. However, if you look at the government's announcements without the exception of Seoul, why is the government announcing statistics in a way that is favorable to them these days? We are receiving a lot of criticism like this, but when we publish data, it seems that we need to make an effort to inform the public of more big data, that is, a lot of information. Finally, the self-ownership rate is also said to have fallen.
<Reporter>
That's right. First of all, it is necessary to explain the housing supply rate, which is a ratio that indicates how many houses exist compared to the number of households.
Korea has already exceeded 100% since 2008. But not every single person owns a single house.
So, we have to look at the self-ownership rate, which means the percentage of households that own their own house among all households. As of the second half of last year, it was 60.5%. Compared to 2019, it decreased by 0.6 percentage points.
Although the number of single-person households continues to increase, it seems that many people remain as tenants without buying a house due to soaring real estate prices.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport expects the figure to improve, saying that the supply of housing will increase significantly in the future. However, it is something that needs to be looked back on whether it provides housing with the conditions that people want to live in.