Agreement Rate for Officetel Commercial Redevelopment Eased to Over 80%

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo In-ho] Starting from June next year, collective buildings such as old officetels and commercial buildings will only need to meet a consent rate of 80% or more when promoting reconstruction or remodeling.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced this content on the 15th at the '115th National Policy Issue Inspection and Coordination Meeting' together with the Office for Government Policy Coordination and related central administrative agencies as part of the 'Regulatory Improvement Plan for Resolving Public Inconvenience and Revitalizing the Construction Industry.'

Since March, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, led by First Vice Minister Park Seon-ho, formed a public-private joint task force (TF) dedicated to improving construction regulations, focusing on discovering tasks to resolve public inconvenience and revitalize the construction industry through public opinion collection and expert consultation.

Through this, a total of 20 regulatory innovation tasks were selected, including simplification of building permits, reduction of building review targets, exclusion of essential living facility area calculations, relaxation of reconstruction permit standards for collective buildings, and promotion of non-face-to-face processes throughout the entire construction administration.

In particular, the government adjusted the reconstruction permit requirements for collective buildings through legal amendments to a consent rate of 80% or more, similar to that of apartment and other shared housing reconstructions.

Until now, officetels and commercial buildings, despite being the same type of collective buildings, faced stricter regulations compared to apartments or row houses when promoting reconstruction or remodeling, but the permit requirements will now be eased.

According to the current Building Act, collective buildings must obtain the consent of all (100%) individual owners to receive reconstruction permits. This has led to many criticisms that reconstruction is practically impossible.

However, collective housing such as apartments and row houses are subject to the 'Act on Maintenance and Improvement of Urban Areas and Dwelling Conditions,' allowing permits with a consent rate of 75-80%.

Accordingly, reconstruction projects for old collective buildings such as commercial buildings over 30 years old, apartment commercial buildings, and officetels are expected to gain new momentum. According to related industries, there are a total of 560,000 collective buildings nationwide, with about 23% or 127,000 located in Seoul.

However, some argue that even if the reconstruction permit requirements for officetels and commercial buildings are eased, these buildings have weaker systems to lead reconstruction or remodeling projects compared to apartments, making it difficult.

An official from the maintenance industry pointed out, "Officetels are divided into residential and office uses, so interests differ. In the case of commercial buildings, businesses must stop operations from demolition through construction, and there is no guarantee that the new commercial building will generate profits as before, so many owners are negative about reconstruction. If there are tenants, conflicts may arise over whether to recover key money."

Meanwhile, with the revision of the Enforcement Decree of the Building Act, from December, the scope of designation for special building districts will be expanded and procedures specified. Previously, the special building district system, which relaxes building standards such as building-to-land ratio for creative architecture, could only be designated for large-scale projects and only public entities could promote it.

With the legal amendment, the designation targets for housing supply and Hanok (traditional Korean houses) revitalization will be expanded from 300 to 200 households for collective housing and from 50 to 10 buildings for Hanok-dense areas, respectively.

Conditions for permitting combined buildings will also be relaxed. The allowed condition will be eased to a shortest distance of up to 500m among three or more sites (currently 100m between two sites), and the application targets will be specified as demolishing vacant buildings and utilizing the space as parks, parking lots, or shared facilities.

From October next year, measures to promote renewal through the activation of special price districts will also be implemented.

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