South Korea's Housing Wealth Gap Hits Record 290 Times as Ownership Slips at the Bottom

A record divide in the homes households own and occupy

South Korea's wealthiest fifth of households held an average of 693.41 million won in homes they owned and lived in during 2025, compared with just 2.39 million won for the poorest fifth. The resulting gap of 290.1 times was the widest since the current statistical series began in 2017.

The figures, drawn from the Survey of Household Finances and Living Conditions and published through the Korean Statistical Information Service, reflect two changes moving in opposite directions. The average for the top group rose 7.7% from a year earlier, while the bottom group's average fell 9.1% to its lowest recorded level.

Homeownership explains much of the enormous difference. Only 6.6% of households in the bottom group owned their current residence, compared with 82.5% in the top group. Households that did not own the home they occupied were assigned a housing value of zero in this measure.

The divide also extended beyond housing. Average total assets in the richest group reached 68.6 times those in the poorest group, another record, even as the difference in annual income narrowed compared with earlier years.

Why the bottom group's average is so low

The survey sorts households into five equal groups according to their assets. Each group contains 20% of households. Its measure of residential housing then counts only a property that a household both owns and occupies.

A family renting its home contributes zero to this calculation. So does a household that owns a property elsewhere but rents the home where it currently lives. A household with several properties has only its own residence counted.

The 2.39 million won average therefore combines a small number of homes with a much larger number of zero entries. Among households in the bottom group that actually owned their residence, the median home value was 38 million won. The median is the middle value when homes are arranged from cheapest to most expensive.

For households in the top group that owned their residence, the median was 720 million won, up 2.9% from a year earlier. Those two medians were about 18.9 times apart, showing the price difference among households that owned their homes alongside the much larger difference in ownership rates.

The bottom group's ownership rate fell by 0.8 percentage points to 6.6%, a record low. The top group's rate also declined, by 1.2 percentage points to 82.5%, but rising property values still lifted its average housing wealth.

How the gap widened over eight years

The housing wealth ratio has nearly doubled since 2017, when the top group's average was 145.5 times the bottom group's. Its latest annual increase, from 244.9 to 290.1, amounted to about 18.5%.

The timeline shows a temporary narrowing in 2023 followed by two years of renewed widening:

• 2017: The housing wealth ratio stood at 145.5 times.
• 2018: The ratio remained around 146 times.
• 2022: The gap reached 245.5 times, while the top group's average housing value peaked at 746.35 million won.
• 2023: The ratio narrowed to 215.1 times amid falling home prices.
• 2024: The gap increased again to 244.9 times.
• 2025: The ratio reached a record 290.1 times.

The top group's average housing value in 2025 was still below its 2022 peak and ranked second highest in the series. The record gap emerged because the bottom group's average had fallen further, while the top group's holdings recovered in value.

Total assets moved further apart too

The richest fifth held average total assets of 1.77615 billion won in 2025, up 7.5%. The poorest fifth held 25.88 million won, down 2.9%, according to the survey figures cited in statistical coverage. The bottom figure was also reported as 25.58 million won; 25.88 million won is consistent with the stated ratio of 68.6 times.

The new ratio exceeded the previous record of 64 times in 2022. In money terms, average assets in the two groups were about 1.75 billion won apart.

Housing is particularly influential in South Korea's household balance sheets. Lee Sun-hwa, a senior research fellow at the National Assembly Futures Institute, said roughly 70% of household assets were concentrated in real estate. That concentration makes differences in property ownership and local prices especially powerful drivers of wealth inequality.

Investment properties and homes rented to other people are excluded from the specific residential housing measure behind the 290.1 ratio. Including those properties could produce a wider real estate divide, although no corresponding ratio was given.

Seoul's expensive apartments pulled further ahead

Korea Real Estate Board figures show how differently homes at opposite ends of Seoul's apartment market appreciated. The average price of the city's most expensive fifth of apartments rose from 1.1 billion won in March 2017 to 2.52 billion won in March 2025.

The least expensive fifth rose from 250 million won to 390 million won over the same period. That was an increase of 56%, compared with about 129% for the most expensive group.

In absolute terms, the expensive apartments gained an average of 1.42 billion won, while the cheapest group gained 140 million won. The price ratio between the two groups widened from 4.4 times to about 6.5 times. These figures describe apartments within Seoul, while the household survey covers households across the country.

Yoo Seon-jong, a real estate professor at Konkuk University, attributed part of the national divide to differences between Seoul and provincial markets. He said expensive properties were concentrated in the capital, while cheaper properties held by households with fewer assets were more likely to be outside it.

Provincial sellers also faced weaker demand and growing stocks of unsold homes, Yoo said. In Seoul, concentrated demand and owners holding onto properties helped restrict the number available for purchase. Those different conditions mean a rise in national housing supply can have very different effects from place to place.

Why narrower income gaps have not closed the wealth divide

Households ranked by income showed a smaller gap than households ranked by assets. In the 2025 survey, the top income fifth had 11.2 times the current income of the bottom fifth and 9.8 times its disposable income.

Current income includes recurring income such as earnings, business income, property income and transfers. Disposable income is the amount left after taxes and other compulsory payments. The survey's income figures refer to the previous year, so the 2025 survey measures income received in 2024.

The current income ratio had narrowed from around 12 to 13 times in 2017 through 2019. The disposable income ratio had also fallen from earlier levels of around 11 to 12 times.

Income is money received over a period; assets are the accumulated value of what a household owns. A property can gain value without its owner receiving a higher salary. A renting household may earn more than before while still lacking an asset that benefits from the same price increase.

The household groups also change when the ranking switches from assets to income. A retired homeowner, for example, may have substantial property wealth but relatively little annual income. The two sets of ratios describe different aspects of household finances.

Financial assets add another layer of inequality

Bank of Korea figures cited alongside the housing data put average financial assets at 314.33 million won for households in the top income fifth and 38.74 million won for the bottom income fifth. Financial assets include holdings such as savings and investments.

Those amounts produce a ratio of about 8.1 times, although the accompanying description put the gap at about nine times. The comparison given for 2020 was eight times, indicating a much smaller change than the sharp widening in the residential housing ratio.

Kwak Beop-jun, head of the macroeconomic analysis team in the Bank of Korea's Research Department, identified property ownership, regional price differences and the timing of purchases as factors behind widening wealth differences. He said the net wealth gap between owners and people without property had expanded in a pattern similar to rising home prices.

The timing matters for generations as well as regions. Households that bought before a large increase in prices accumulated gains, while later buyers faced a higher entry cost. Kwak said differences in when people purchased homes had made inequality between generations more pronounced.

Housing proposals focus on location and availability

Kim Hyun-soo, a professor of architectural engineering at Dankook University, called for greater attention to homes people could occupy quickly, alongside the government's goal of starting construction on 1.35 million homes in the greater Seoul area by 2030.

Kim set out his preferred priority in concrete terms:

"What matters more than a target of 1.35 million homes is securing 100,000 homes that people can move into as early as next year," Kim said.

Kim also proposed housing for young people within a commute of 30 minutes from major employment centers. He suggested areas around rail transfer stations, including those connected to GTX, the Shinbundang Line and the Sinansan Line. He argued that moving some economic and urban functions away from the capital should accompany construction.

Yoo, at Konkuk University, said mortgage restrictions were also shaping where people looked for homes. He cited a mortgage ceiling of 600 million won for properties priced at 1.5 billion won or less, saying the rules were channeling demand toward relatively affordable Seoul districts such as Nowon and Dobong.

Kim Kwang-seok, head of economic research at the Korea Economic and Industrial Research Institute, called for more rental housing and more publicly supplied apartments for young people and newly married couples. His proposal focused on making secure housing available to vulnerable households, rather than relying on changes in sale prices alone.

Property taxes and housing support enter the debate

Lee, at the National Assembly Futures Institute, examined the issue in a report on asset inequality and reform of property holding taxes over the medium and long term. She identified the growing divide between households with and without homes as a major source of South Korea's asset inequality.

Lee proposed moving toward taxation based on the value of housing assets. She also called for stable management of the ratio between officially assessed property values and market values. That ratio matters because assessed values help determine how much tax an owner pays.

Her recommendations extended beyond taxation to financial conditions, household investment choices, housing welfare and supply. The proposals address different parts of the same divide: the value owners accumulate, the opportunities available to buyers and the security available to tenants.

The figures and proposals point to a practical challenge for policymakers. Expensive homes in Seoul have gained much more value than cheaper homes, provincial markets face unsold stock, and most households in the poorest asset group do not own their residence. Policies aimed at one of those conditions will reach a different set of households from policies aimed at another.

Key Points

• The richest fifth of South Korean households held 290.1 times the average residential housing wealth of the poorest fifth in 2025, a record.
• Only 6.6% of the bottom group owned their current residence, compared with 82.5% of the top group.
• The housing measure assigns zero to households that do not own the home they occupy.
• Average total assets reached 1.77615 billion won at the top and 25.88 million won at the bottom, a ratio of 68.6 times.
• Seoul's most expensive fifth of apartments rose about 129% from March 2017 to March 2025, compared with 56% for the cheapest fifth.
• Income gaps narrowed compared with earlier years, while proposed responses include accessible housing, rental support and changes to property taxation.