Home Mortgage Loans to Multiple-Home Owners at Top 5 Banks Grow 2.3 Times in 3 Years...Now Total 36 Trillion Won

Rising since 2023, reaching the 39 trillion won range in the first half of last year
Downward trend from the second half following the June 27 measures

The outstanding balance of home mortgage loans held by multiple-home owners at the five major commercial banks (KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, and NH NongHyup) has increased 2.3 times over the past three years.

According to the financial sector on February 22, the outstanding balance of home mortgage loans for multiple-home owners (individuals owning two or more homes) at the five major banks stood at approximately 36.4686 trillion won as of the end of January. This is about 2.3 times higher than the 15.8565 trillion won recorded at the end of January 2023, when the surge in such loans by multiple-home owners began in earnest.

The growth is much steeper compared to the overall outstanding home mortgage balance at the five banks, which increased by 20% over the same period from the 513 trillion won range to the 610 trillion won range. While the outstanding home mortgage balance for multiple-home owners had previously risen gradually, it began to climb sharply in early 2023 under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration, after regulations on loans to multiple-home owners were significantly eased.

At the time, concerns over a housing market downturn spreading even to the Seoul metropolitan area due to the impact of high interest rates and bad loans in real estate project financing (PF) led the government to ease regulations in an attempt to engineer a soft landing in the real estate market.

As a result, the outstanding balance of home mortgage loans for multiple-home owners increased from 15.4202 trillion won at the end of 2022 to 26.0688 trillion won at the end of 2023, and further to 38.4028 trillion won at the end of 2024, expanding by more than 10 trillion won each year.

As banks tightened lending limits for multiple-home owners due to household debt concerns, the balance inched up to 39.0867 trillion won by the end of the first half of last year. Then, after the June 27 measures banned new home mortgage loans for multiple-home owners in the Seoul metropolitan area and in regulated areas, the balance declined to the 36 trillion won range.

With new loan inflows for multiple-home owners in the Seoul metropolitan area now blocked, President Lee Jaemyung is pointing not only to loans held by registered landlords but also to all existing loans taken out by multiple-home owners. In response, multiple-home owners are on high alert over the possibility that loan maturities may not be extended or that regulations on refinancing could be tightened.

However, most general individual home mortgages are long-term loans with amortized repayment over several decades. At the five major banks, the outstanding balance of multiple-home owner mortgages maturing in the first half of this year is about 49.9 billion won, equivalent to 0.14% of the total outstanding balance as of the end of January. At one of the banks, bullet-repayment loans accounted for about 0.3% of its multiple-home owner mortgage portfolio.