Yongin City Requests Government to Lift Real Estate Regulations Across the Entire City

Yongin City Hall Panorama

[Asia Economy (Yongin) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Yongin City in Gyeonggi Province has requested the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to lift real estate regulatory restrictions across the entire city.

On the 9th, Yongin City announced that it sent an official letter to the Ministry on the 3rd, recommending the removal of the designation of certain areas in Cheoin-gu and the adjustment target areas in Giheung and Suji-gu, as well as the lifting of the speculative overheating district designation for Giheung and Suji-gu.

This is based on the judgment that due to the economic downturn in Gyeonggi Province, housing transactions have decreased by 76% compared to the previous year, thus falling outside the criteria for regulatory designation and causing citizens to be excessively regulated.

The city also added that the housing price increase rate over the past three months (-1.43%) was lower than the consumer price increase rate in Gyeonggi Province (0.8%), fulfilling the conditions for lifting the regulatory designation. The government's criteria for selecting adjustment target areas is when the housing price increase rate in the area over three months exceeds 1.3 times the consumer price increase rate of the city or province that includes the area.

Giheung-gu and Suji-gu in Yongin City were previously designated as adjustment target areas on December 31, 2018.

Since then, on June 19, 2020, following the government's housing market stabilization policy, Giheung and Suji-gu were strengthened to speculative overheating districts, and some areas including Pogok-eup in Cheoin-gu were also included as adjustment target areas, resulting in most areas within the city being subject to real estate regulations such as loan restrictions, strengthened taxation, and resale restrictions.

Mayor Lee Sang-il of Yongin said, "The Red Flag Act, which limited the weight and speed of automobiles to protect the carriage industry in England in 1826, is known as a representative example of bad regulation that industrialized the automobile first but lost leadership to the United States and Germany," and added, "We request the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to realistically understand the housing market trends and downturn and conduct a practical review."

Meanwhile, if the area is removed from the adjustment target designation, restrictions will be eased, such as relaxing the first-priority subscription qualifications and shortening the resale restriction period for pre-sale rights to six months.