Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Dr. Buck]

Circus Monkey,
Ditch that coconut tree. What you need is a treehouse. And it quite possible.

Check out the plans and pics:

http://www.btinternet.com/~fulton/treehous.htm


The only problem is the tree. Mature trees in Korea are rare. Most of the trees in any given mountainside forest are less than thirty years old.
So goes the sad history of the Korean environment.

Caves . . . earth home . . that's where it's at. All I need is some dynamite and a backhoe and a couple hundred bags of cement.

[dutchman]

Hey all,

Thanks for renewing my interest in this topic. My wife and I are going to be looking at a house and some land near her hometown in ChungChongNamDo. 190 pyung of isolated land near a large lake. Comes with an old style 26 pyung house that "needs some work". All for a mere 15 million (and the realtor said the owner would probably come down on the price).

Found it here: http://kr.realestate.yahoo.com/

Can't wait to see it.

[Manner of Speaking]

[Sloth]

[Manner of Speaking]

Ok this I gotta check out. My GF told me last night one can buy a farmhouse and land in her home town for 2 million won. She's going home next weekend for Buddha's birthday and I'm going to have her ask around at the pudongsans. Will keep the board posted.

[Stunted Wookie]

Hi;
My father in Law has land he wants to sell. I am interested in a small piece of it but its hard to get out there to look at the parcels....
I will find out from him what the market rate is per pyung; and what the costs are to transfer deeds, etc....

I used to work in real estate appraisals back home.....I will try to find a quality checklist to post for anyone looking at buying.

[dutchman]

I just got back from a trip to my wife's hometown which included a look at the above mentioned property. I was not expecting much at all but what I saw was disappointing. We followed the realtor to the house, first ten minutes on a one way concrete road, the next five minutes on a one lane dirt road and the last five minutes on a two track. All that way to see utter garbage. The house was complete trash. There was no toilet (despite the realtor's assurances that there was). But the worst part was the land. I figured even if the house was bad it would be nice to have a big piece of land. Not the case. All usable land had already been sold. It was just a worthless odd shaped lot.

My dad always told me "You get what you pay for". Very true in this case. No bargain at all.

[mack the knife]

i want to buy a place like the one james bond had "relations" with Hailie (sp?) in...oh, wait...that was a "temple"...and not in "korea"...sorry...

[Manner of Speaking]

Dutchman,

Sorry to hear that, you went all that way to look at something not worth considering. Guess you can't trust real estate agents, gotta see it to believe it. I'm not really seriously thinking of buying something this year, but when my girlfriend said 2 million she piqued my curiosity. She said her mother's place could go for about that, and it's a fair size piece of land, although the house is rather old. Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

[Ryst Helmut]

Manner of Speaking,

1 pyeong roughly equals 4 square yards

Well, rules of land price are same as home...location, location, location. I have some land and will have about 1000 pyeong more if need be. The reason why I mention the amount of land is that even within the boundaries of this land the price per pyeong is quite different. On my hillside land it will run you about 250,000 won per pyeong, however only 20 meters away on the open field area, a pyeong of land runs about 380,000. As I've found, hillside land is always cheaper....of course.

Location, well, my land is quite near the area the previous posters linked sites to (Cheonan and Yesan). It's generally cheap, but since the promotion of Shin-do-shi (New City Unnamed) prices are rising quickly. If you are thinking to buy land hoping it'll improve in value, just follow the trains...

Back to the land bit...one big problem is that you may buy a chunk of land wherever, but that is just the land for house and lawn/garden. Owners of property surrounding yours are sticklers about you keeping to your land. That is, what about a driveway/roadway to your house? My friend bought land just 5 meters off a road, but was surrounded by other people's land....boy, was getting the other owner to grant permission for my friend to use his land for a driveway (2 pyeong) a VAST headache, and expensive pay-off as well. Just a little info. of feasible problems regarding location.

When it comes to building a house. Well, it depends on what quality you want. You can have a sturdy (no frills) home built for an average of 1.7 million won per pyeong, and for 2.3/5 million won per pyeong for a house that will last for years to come, and look nice.

There are newpaper-like catalogs that you can get (sorry, blanking on the name) where you can read what land is for sale, by whom, its location, and various financial situations. By financial situation I don't mean they state the cost, they'll say 'like': For sale by XX Bank due to foreclosure of XX's 80 million won blah blah blah. You can visit the site of the land, determine its worth to you, then on a particular day you and whomever else goes and bids on lot # x. IN SECRET. The highest bidder gets the land, however, if the owner of the land is not satisfied with the offer, he may decline. The lot then goes back for bidding the next week, I believe.

I think that's it for now, as I need to mark papers.

Cheers,

Ryst

[bjonothan]

[quote="The King of Kwangju"]I used to browse the "Sa-Rang Bang" newspaper (the "for sale by owner" cheapie newspaper) for country houses all the time. I also visited a few near KJ. They were quite cheap, but like the Waetherman said, pretty rough.

It might be expensive near Seoul, but you can certainly buy some nice properties near the "smaller" megacities and then fix them up.

At the time, however, a foreigner couldn't own land in Korea. Maybe that's changed.[/quote][quote]
I believe that the only people that can buy land in Korea, other than Koreans are ex-soldiers from the war....[/quote]

[bjonothan]

[quote="The King of Kwangju"]I used to browse the "Sa-Rang Bang" newspaper (the "for sale by owner" cheapie newspaper) for country houses all the time. I also visited a few near KJ. They were quite cheap, but like the Waetherman said, pretty rough.

It might be expensive near Seoul, but you can certainly buy some nice properties near the "smaller" megacities and then fix them up.

At the time, however, a foreigner couldn't own land in Korea. Maybe that's changed.[/quote][quote]
I believe that the only people that can buy land in Korea, other than Koreans are ex-soldiers from the war....[/quote]

[richinkorea]

I've looked this up several times and still have trouble understanding it.

1 pyeong equals 3.3 meters right

1 pyeong roughly equals 4 square yards

1 square yard equals 3 sq feet ?

so 1000 sq ft equals 333 sq yards = 83 pyeong ???? I don't think that's right.

Can anyone help me with my poor math ?

I would like to know how many pyeong = 1000 sq ft ?
and how you got there.


Thanks

[dutchman]

I figured it out once and came to the conclusion that 1 pyeong is about 30 square feet. Sorry, I don't remember the equation I used, only remembered the result. So, 1000 square feet would be about 33 pyeong.

Man, my math sucks. I used to be good at it. I dread the day when my son needs help with his math homework.

[richinkorea]

Thanks, Dutch.

That's what I get when I approximate in my head also (sizing up a room for example, my in-laws live a 32 pyeong place, 1000 sq ft. seems right).

But, I'd still like to figure how to do this a bit more scientifically. You guys have got me looking at the real estate sites too, haha.

Rich