Twenty and Thirty-Somethings Clung to Apartments and Purchased 4 of 10 Apartments Sold in Seoul This Year

[경향신문]

Four out of ten apartments sold in Seoul from January to July this year was purchased by twenty and thirty-somethings. The panic buying of young people continued, despite that housing prices have peaked.

According to the monthly apartment sales figures released by the Korea Real Estate Board on September 23, a total of 34,045 apartments were sold in Seoul from January-July this year (based on the date the sales were reported). Among these deals, 36.9% (12,550 cases) of the apartments were purchased by people in their thirties, the age group that bought the greatest number of apartments. When we add the apartments purchased by people under thirty (5.0%), the twenty and thirty-somethings accounted for 41.9% of the sales. The number of apartments purchased by people under forty is increasing at a steep rate every year. They purchased 31.8% of the apartments sold in 2019 and 37.4% in 2020. They were followed by people in their forties with 26.2%, fifties with 15.5%, sixties 8.8% and seventies and older 5.6%.

Young people clearly bought more apartments in the Seoul metropolitan area outside Seoul, such as Gyeonggi and Incheon, as well. This year in Gyeonggi, 124,391 apartments were sold, and among them 35.8% were purchased by a buyer who was under forty. This age group purchased 28.6% of the apartments sold in 2019 and 30.4% of the apartments sold last year. In Incheon, 33,524 apartments were traded this year and among them 32.6% were purchased by a person under forty. This was a 5.4% increase from the previous year.

Market experts believe that young people who had yet to purchase a home were trying to catch up by buying affordable apartments in Gangbuk and that demand for undervalued apartments in Gyeonggi and Incheon, where housing prices are relatively cheaper than in Seoul, was increasing.