Those in lower income households achieved their dream of “My Home” only when they were almost 60 years old. (Image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Jun. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Recently, it was revealed that South Koreans bought their first home at an average age of 43.
However, the word ‘first home’ is just a saying for 38 percent of housing prices are covered by loans from banks and other financial institutions.
According to the survey of 61,275 households by the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, the average age of household owners who bought their first home in the last four years was 43.3.
This is higher than the 43 recorded in 2017 and the age of 41.9 in 2016, up 1.4 years from the previous two years. Moreover, in lower income households, the average age of household ownership was 56.7 years.
In other words, those in lower income households achieved their dream of “My Home” only when they were almost 60 years old.
But even in the case of owning house with difficulties, buyers were heavily dependent on loans.
At the time of purchase, the ratio of loans extended by financial institutions (LTV1) to housing prices was 37.8 percent on average.
The figure is 0.4 percentage point lower than the 38.2 percent recorded at the time of the 2017 survey, but is still close to 40 percent.
For young people without money saved up and newlyweds, the burden of loans based on housing prices was much greater.
LTV1 reached 45.6 percent and 43.2 percent, respectively, at the time of the home purchase for young and newlywed households.
Due to such burdens, many young and newly married couples are wandering from place to place in accordance with the deadline of their previous and monthly rent contracts.
In fact, the ratio of people who lived in homes for less than two years now was 36.4 percent in ordinary households, compared with 80.9 percent and 69.7 percent for young and newlywed households, respectively.
However, they did not completely give up their dream of owning a house, as 83.3 percent of newlyweds said they “need to have a home.”
D. M. Park (dmpark@koreabizwire.com)
