Seoul housing prices higher than Tokyo: report

SEOUL, Nov. 19 (Yonhap) -- The median price of a house in Seoul is higher than that of Tokyo, a parliamentary report showed Sunday. The findings by the National Assembly Research Service (NARS) released by Rep. Park Kwang-on showed that the price of a home in Seoul cost an average 100 million won (US$90,950) more than that of a house in the Japanese capital. NARS said the median price for a Seoul home that was traded as of late 2016 stood at 434.85 million won. The price for a comparable home in Tokyo stood at 311.36 million won, with numbers for Osaka, another major city, standing at 198.08 million won. The median home price in New York stood at 443.4 million won, which is roughly on par with Seoul This translates into South Koreans spending three to five years more to purchase a house than citizens in Tokyo and even New York, since average income levels in Japan and the United States are higher than in South Korea. Prices for homes in Hong Kong and London are higher than that of Seoul. Related to the time it takes for a South Korean to buy his or her house in the capital city, Statistics Korea said that if the average urban income in South Korea is calculated at 47.28 million won, it would take 9.2 years for a person here to acquire a home. This is longer that those living in other major cities in Japan and the United States. A resident in Tokyo needs 4.7 years to buy a house, with the corresponding figure for New York standing at 5.7 years. Meanwhile, the latest report showed the median price of a home in Asia's fourth-largest economy stood at 228.53 million won. This translates into the home price in Seoul being 1.9 times higher than the national average. yonngong@yna.co.kr (END)