Joy of Winning a Housing Lottery Short-Lived... 50,000 People in Tears Over 3 Years Due to Information Input Errors

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It has been revealed that over 50,000 people were disqualified winners in private and public housing subscription lotteries over the past three years. Most of these cases were due to errors in entering information such as point score data, leading to calls for improvements like computer automation.

According to data on 'Subscription Disqualified Winner Status' submitted by Kim Byung-wook, a member of the National Assembly Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, received from the Korea Real Estate Board and Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH), from 2020 to July 2022, a total of 51,750 applicants were disqualified winners across the two institutions.

In private sales (Korea Real Estate Board’s Subscription Home), there were 19,101 disqualified winners in 2020, 21,221 in 2021, and 7,944 from January to July 2022, totaling 48,266 over three years. In public sales (LH Subscription Center), there were 1,725 in 2020, 1,330 in 2021, and 429 from January to July 2022, totaling 3,484.

By reason, in private sales over three years, the largest group was disqualified winners due to subscription point score errors with 39,647 people, followed by 4,744 cases of duplicate subscription or winning among members of non-homeowner households, 1,501 cases of winning within the past five years, 1,054 cases of re-winning restrictions, 907 cases of special supply frequency limits, and 413 cases of point score system winners re-winning within two years.

In public sales, reasons included 888 cases of home ownership, 687 cases of income exceeding limits, 443 cases of total asset exceeding limits, 414 cases of past winning, and 1,052 cases of other reasons.

The proliferation of disqualified winners is partly due to applicants’ inaccurate information entry and mistakes, but many point out that insufficient automation of information linkage in the subscription application system is a bigger reason.

The Korea Real Estate Board (Subscription Home) provides real-time automatic entry information through information linkage such as subscription savings account enrollment details (enrollment date, deposit type), subscription savings account duration, and whether the applicant is restricted from re-winning or has won within the past five years. LH (Subscription Center) provides applicant’s personal information (name, resident registration number) as real-time automatic entry information through information linkage. However, other information must be verified by applicants themselves or through external agency linkage and separate document submission after the subscription application.

Assemblyman Kim Byung-wook said, "To minimize disqualified winners and reduce harm to innocent applicants, it is necessary to increase the number of information items automatically linked at the time of subscription application." He added, "LH and the Korea Real Estate Board should actively pursue discussions for automated information linkage with external agencies such as resident registration, family relationship registration, income, and asset data."

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