[2026 Parliamentary Audit] Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hyeongil: "Supply to Increase from 2028... Housing Prices to Gradually Stabilize"

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy Lee Hyeong-il said on Oct. 22, regarding rising housing prices, “If we step up our efforts to increase supply, the market will gradually become more stable.”

During a parliamentary audit by the National Assembly’s Finance and Economy Planning Committee that day, Lee responded to a question from Lee Jong-wook of the People Power Party about rising apartment prices in Seoul, saying, “Leading indicators of supply, such as apartment permits and construction starts, are currently increasing.”

Yonhap News Agency

He added, “A review of supply in the third phase of new towns suggests that the volume of supply will increase from 2028 onward.” However, on the short-term outlook for housing prices, he said, “Upside and downside factors are mixed, so we need to watch market trends more closely.”

Lee Jong-wook said that apartment prices in Seoul had risen for 88 consecutive weeks and that rents and monthly rental prices were also strong. He called for measures to stabilize housing for ordinary people in the face of an expected supply shortage lasting at least two years, until new supply returns to normal.

In response, Lee Hyeong-il said, “Based on current estimates of the number of homes scheduled for occupancy, it is true that we face difficulties.” He added, “We are placing greater emphasis on expanding long-term publicly supported rental housing that allows residents to stay continuously for more than 20 years.”

He also shared his views on the win-win landlord program. “Benefits apply if jeonse rent is not raised by more than 5% over two years, and the occupancy requirement is waived even if the landlord does not live in the property,” Lee said. “Under the current housing lease laws, most cases already meet these conditions, so there is a sense that eligibility has been expanded too broadly.”

Calls also continued for housing policy performance indicators to focus on actual occupancy. When Kim Nam-jun of the Democratic Party of Korea said that the recent deterioration in supply conditions was due to delays in permits and construction starts in 2022 and 2023, and called for actual occupancy figures, rather than construction starts, to be used as policy targets and performance indicators, Lee replied, “I agree.”

“In the past, we reported primarily on permits, but because many projects did not proceed to construction, we began tracking construction starts,” Lee said. “Tracking projects through to occupancy would make the results more tangible to the public.” He added, “We expect about 150,000 publicly funded housing units to be occupied nationwide from the fourth quarter of this year through next year, including 100,000 units in the Seoul metropolitan area. We will follow through until the homes are actually occupied.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.