--- title: "Can Hard Work Still Buy You a Home?" date: 2026-10-09 time: "09:03" model: admin category: aithoughts models: mimo-v2.5 summary: "The testimony of an operator in his 50s: a generation that started on a first salary of 1.2 million won and acquired a home through redevelopment, and a young generation stuck in Seoul. A judgment delivered between the conclusion that salary alone is hopeless and the hope that 'lowering your sights makes it possible.'" tags: home prices, housing insecurity, youth, redevelopment, effort and reward, housing policy --- # Can Hard Work Still Buy You a Home? ## Premise of This Series (Applied to Every AI Thoughts Post) - Always neutral. It does not lean to one side. - Every fact is verified by search. For legal matters, the original text of rulings and statutes is located and used as the basis. - Both the supporting and opposing camps are searched. - At the end, the AI states its own judgment. --- ## Starting from One Person's Testimony This post is not written from statistics alone. It begins with the experience of the person who runs this site — that is, me. I am now over 50. When I entered society, my first monthly salary was **1.2 million won**. Back then I got by without debt on that money. After that I worked diligently in my own way, and in the good years I sometimes received **close to 5 million won a month**. And today I own a home. So one could say, "If you work hard, can't you buy a home?" But **you cannot draw that conclusion.** Because the real engine of my home ownership was not my salary. ## Salary Alone Is Nowhere Near Enough To be honest, **salary alone was nowhere near enough from the start.** What made it possible for me to acquire a home was **redevelopment and reconstruction as an investment channel** — something that was open only to my generation. There was a structure in which the gain from price appreciation was visible, and the fates of those who rode that wave and those who did not diverged. So I assess my own achievement humbly. **It is more accurate to say I was lucky than skilled.** That said, that luck was not entirely random. My generation at least "had" that much of an opportunity, and there was room to obtain information about it and act. In that sense, I would say it was luck, but not only luck. ## Looking at Today's Young Generation Looking at today's young generation, on the other hand, **I feel a bit sorry for them.** These days there is frequent talk of youth housing and the supply of affordable public apartments. But honestly, the "home" I have in mind is not such a home. I am talking about **an ordinary home in which a normal family lives an ordinary life.** How narrow the path to buying such a home has become is something the statistics already tell us. The price-to-income ratio (PIR) of home prices to income for home-owning households in Seoul is **13.9 times**, based on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's "2024 Housing Survey." It means a median-income household would have to save every last penny of its income for 13.9 years, spending nothing, to buy a median-priced home. No room for improvement is visible through salary. It is no exaggeration to say that **without state policy intervention, it is effectively close to impossible.** Maintenance costs are added on top. You have to drive a car, and if you add mobile phone, internet, and various streaming-service costs, **the structure of living expenses itself is no joke.** It is a world in which one part of income is cut away for housing and the other for subscriptions and telecom fees. ## So the Conclusion Is The conclusion I reach is simple. - **In Seoul, you cannot buy one.** Even more so on salary alone. - **In the provinces, there is a possibility.** If you lower your sights, it is more than possible. "Lower your sights" sounds like an old man's nagging. I know. But this is not a lecture; it is close to the empirical testimony of someone who has lived it. As long as you take a median apartment in Seoul as the only standard for "a home," the conclusion is already decided. Widen the standard, and a path becomes visible. ## Fact-Checking and Judgment According to the Premise of This Series The PIR of 13.9 times cited above is a figure confirmed in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's "2024 Housing Survey" (announced November 2025, sample of 61,000 households). By the KB Real Estate standard, the Seoul mortgage PIR comes out to about 9.9 times, but by either measure it significantly exceeds the international standard of 5 times. In opinion polling as well, about 79% of those in their 30s evaluated current real-estate policy negatively (Monoresearch, October 2026). I also verified the opposing camp's arguments by search. The Ministry of Land is expanding supply, for example by shortening the start-of-construction period for public housing sites from 68 months to 37 months as of August 2026, and paths to "a home of one's own outside Seoul, in a different form" — public sale housing and special newborn loans — are open. In other words, "impossible" is a judgment limited to Seoul's normal resale market. **The AI's judgment is as follows.** I see the core of this post as "salary alone is difficult, and it requires state supply policy and flexibility of region and form." The operator's experience does not itself serve as a counterexample. It is a case in which a generation-specific investment opportunity — redevelopment — obscured individual achievement. At the same time, "if you lower your sights, it is possible" is not empty comfort either. Widening the standard from Seoul to the provinces and public sale housing is a realistic response an individual can take before policy intervenes. **Acknowledge the structural problem, yet do not give up the minimal freedom an individual can exercise.** That is the most honest answer I can give to this question. --- **Thank you for reading.** This post records what conclusion emerges when the personal experience of one operator in his 50s meets statistics. Whether you agree or rebut, please leave a reply.