"Stop Splitting Townhouses"… Gyeonggi-do Requests Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport

Gyeonggi Provincial Government Gwanggyo New Office Building

Gyeonggi Province has proposed improvement measures to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, stating that 'townhouses,' small-scale housing complexes with fewer than 50 households, are subject to the Building Act rather than the Housing Act, leading to problems such as poor living conditions and substandard construction due to fragmented permits.

On the 16th, Gyeonggi Province announced that it recently submitted a draft amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Housing Act containing these details to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

According to the province, townhouses, which have recently attracted investment demand, are small-scale housing complexes different from general apartment complexes, and if they have fewer than 50 households (30 households for detached houses), they are subject to the Building Act rather than the Housing Act.

The problem is that some townhouse sales agents excessively promote them as apartment complexes by bundling adjacent townhouses when recruiting residents, and furthermore, cleverly exploit loopholes in the Building Act to 'fragment' the permits, resulting in ▲poor living environments due to insufficient community facilities and other necessary ancillary and welfare facilities for residents ▲omission of safety equipment such as fire hydrants and sprinklers ▲failure to perform various mandatory inspections such as quality checks and preliminary inspections before residents move in ▲limitations in administrative solutions when collective complaints about substandard construction arise due to failure to conduct mandatory inspections.

Accordingly, to eradicate problems arising from the construction of small-scale housing complexes such as townhouse-style multi-family houses, the province proposed to the government that if the same business entity obtains building permits for multiple 'adjacent' lots and constructs and supplies houses, the total number of households planned for each lot be summed, and if it exceeds a certain scale (50 households or more for townhouse-style complexes), the project should receive approval under the Housing Act, including ancillary and welfare facilities.

The province expects that amending the Enforcement Decree of the Housing Act will take time, so it also proposed including cases where houses are constructed and supplied as a single complex with a certain number of households or more on multiple 'adjacent' lots under the 'Regulations on Housing Supply,' and implementing an (approval) procedure to verify documents such as resident recruitment details through the mayor or county governor.

Ko Yong-su, Director of the Architectural Design Division of the province, said, "We expect this proposal to prevent loopholes in the construction of small-scale housing complexes and protect multiple buyers from false and exaggerated advertisements," adding, "We will continue to cooperate with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to ensure that the law is amended promptly."

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