About — Who Is Behind Archibuildhunt?
Based in South Korea. 10 years in construction cost management for general contractors. Writing about buildings, money, and the real estate markets most people only dream about — with the numbers nobody else shows you.
The Honest Version
I’m not a real estate investor with a portfolio of twenty properties. I’m not a licensed broker, a fund manager, or someone who quit their job to flip houses on YouTube.
I’m a construction cost estimator — what we call gongmu in Korean — who has spent a decade inside general contracting firms, running quantity takeoffs, coordinating drawings, and figuring out what things actually cost to build. That’s my job. That’s what I know.
What started as professional curiosity turned into something more. I began noticing how differently construction economics work across countries — how a ¥0 abandoned house in rural Japan hides a $90,000 renovation bill, how a Dubai apartment that looks expensive on paper is cheaper per square meter than Seoul, how a 1960s German building gets renovated and resold at a profit that would be impossible under Korean zoning rules.
Nobody was writing about these things from a builder’s perspective. So I started doing it myself.
“Most real estate content is written by people who want to sell you something. I write it from the perspective of someone who has read the drawings, run the numbers, and stood on the job site. The view is different from here.”
My Background
- 2015 — Present Construction Cost Estimator (견적·공무) at a Korean general contractor. Quantity takeoffs, subcontractor pricing, drawing coordination, project cost management. Specialized in residential and mixed-use developments.
- 2023 Started exploring global real estate — initially as a hobby, tracking markets in Japan, Thailand, Portugal, and the UAE while managing projects in Korea.
- 2024 Launched Archibuildhunt.com — combining construction knowledge with global property research. Focus: honest numbers, renovation reality checks, and ROI math from a builder’s perspective.
- 2026 Launched YouTube: Cost & Country — video breakdowns of real estate markets around the world. Every episode, one country, real renovation costs, real returns.
What I Write About
Two things live at the intersection of my professional background and my curiosity: how buildings are priced, and how that pricing varies wildly depending on where you are in the world. That’s the thread running through everything on this site.
On the Cost & Country category, I cover real estate markets from Japan to Dubai to Portugal — not as a travel blogger, but as someone who wants to know: what does it actually cost to buy, fix, and run a property here? That question leads to surprisingly interesting places.
On the AI & Architecture side, I cover how tools like Midjourney, ChatGPT-4o, and Maket.ai are changing the way construction and design professionals work — with real prompts, real workflows, and no hype about robots replacing architects.
Why “Archibuildhunt”?
Archi — architecture. Build — construction. Hunt — the search. The name came from what I actually do: hunt for buildings worth understanding. Not just pretty renders. Not just price tags. The full picture — design intent, structural logic, build cost, market position. That’s what I’m after.
A Note on Independence
This site is not affiliated with any real estate agency, construction firm, or investment platform. I do not receive commission for any property recommendations. The analysis here is my own, based on publicly available data, professional experience, and direct research. When I think something is a bad deal, I’ll say so. When the numbers don’t work, I’ll show you why.
That’s the only way this is worth reading.
Archibuildhunt.com is written and maintained by CJ, a construction cost professional based in South Korea.
All content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice.