Publication

A Housing Market Review of the Lee Jae-myung Government's First 15 Months

This issue brief reviews apartment sale, jeonse and monthly-rent prices, jeonse and monthly-rent listings and the jeonse supply-demand balance, and policy implementation from the government's inauguration in June 2025 through September 2026, using statistics from KB Kookmin Bank and the Korea Real Estate Board and listing data from Asil. Seoul apartment sale prices rose 18.2% over 15 months, second among the same periods of past governments since 1986 only to the Roh Tae-woo government during the "three lows" boom, and the highest since the Kim Young-sam government. Seoul jeonse prices rose 11.6%, and Seoul apartment monthly rents on the Korea Real Estate Board basis rose 9.7% over 14 months, the opposite direction from the Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk Yeol governments over the same period. Apartment jeonse and monthly-rent listings in Gyeonggi Province fell 53.5%, from 42,835 to 19,911, and the jeonse supply-demand index for the Seoul metropolitan area is the highest since December 2020. Shifting the supply target to a construction-start basis is progress. The total household debt target was adjusted mid-year, and the tax reform plan was partly changed in the course of finalizing the government bill. The report presents five tasks: an impact assessment before the land transaction permit zones expire, disclosure of the effect of jeonse loan restrictions on tenants, reflecting jeonse and monthly-rent transaction statistics in the evaluation of measures, reporting of construction-start results, and disclosure of how the tax reform plan was revised.