45 Percent of Families Don’t Own a Home

It was revealed that one out of two households nationwide don’t own a home, but that about 880,000 households have more than two houses.

The Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs announced the results of the current situation of house and land ownership per household nationwide yesterday, reporting that 54.6 percent (about 9.71 million households) out of a total of about 17.772 million households have an average of 1.15 houses, and about 8.06 million households don’t own a house.

The number of households with two houses or more stood at 887,180. The number of households with two houses reached 722,054, those with three reached 86,664, those with four reached 25,253, and those with five reached 12,701.

The number of households owning more than 11 houses even stood at 14,823. Among them, 2,450 households have lived in Seoul, and the number of households who live in three areas, including Seocho-gu, Gangnam-gu and Songpa-gu was 1,100. On an individual basis, Mr. A working for rental business topped the list by owning 1,083 houses.

On a household basis, it was analyzed that the top one percent (177,723 households) owned 34.1 percent of the available private land, and that the top two percent held 45.5 percent of it.

Meanwhile, the results of a survey of four reconstruction apartment complexes (9,197 households) in Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu, Seoul, conducted by the Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MOCT), showed that the number of owners of those apartments who actually live in their homes merely stood at 41 percent (3,855) of the total.

Owners of 3,226 households out of the 5,342 remaining households were revealed to have lived in other areas in Seoul. In particular, at a certain apartment complex in Gangnam area, only 32 percent of owners have lived there.

It was revealed that the housing supply-to-demand ratio in Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu was 100.2 percent and 100 percent, respectively, which surpasses the average housing supply-to-demand ratio in Seoul (86.3 percent).

An official of the MOCT explained, “The fact that the low proportion of owner-occupation and high housing supply-to-demand ratio in the reconstruction apartment complexes in the Gangnam areas reflects that speculative funds have affected the recent skyrocketing property prices in the Gangnam areas.”

Jong-Dae Ha Seung-Heon Lee orionha@donga.com ddr@donga.com