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Comment by Misdicorl | Hacker News Reader

Are housing prices in Seoul seeing the same inflation we see in many western cities? I'd be mildly surprised. (Anecdotally) It seems like Asian cultures are much less likely to treat housing as an investment and/or allow the few to dictate to the many (specifically in the housing arena).

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>It seems like Asian cultures are much less likely to treat housing as an investment

Isn’t China one of the most prominent examples of using real estate as investment? There’s even whole ghost towns of apartment buildings that are constructed for this purpose.

yea all my Chinese (in China) relatives assume you should only invest in housing. And then when we tell them we have zero investment properties, they get really, really concerned for our future welfare and think that we're not doing very well.

Isn't all that investment outside of China? My understanding was ghost towns weren't investment based but planning failure based

No, domestic savers have capital controls and do not have the means to move money easily outside the country. The stock market also is not reliable in China as an avenue of investment. Government pensions are also small. So that mostly leaves real estate.

Evergrande Group is emblematic of the real estate industry’s trouble there. Property is 15-30% of Chinese GDP and much of it goes towards investment property.

Thanks!

Yes. Seoul housing is inflated.

No. Koreans and Chinese both love propping up property as an investment.

Japanese are the ones who don't, as their system is vastly less investment oriented and less expandable.

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