Seoul City Increases Public Housing Supply and Enhances Quality

Public Housing Purchase Standards and Procedures Revised for the First Time in 8 Years

Seoul City announced on the 15th that it will change the standards and procedures for purchasing public housing for the first time in eight years to expand the supply of public housing and improve housing quality.

The public housing purchase standards (purchase work processing standards) include a series of procedures in which private construction companies build some of the increased housing units as public housing and supply (sell) them to Seoul City when promoting projects such as reconstruction with relaxed floor area ratios.

Based on these standards, the city purchased a total of 10,319 units over 13 years from 2010 in redevelopment projects and supplied them as Happy Housing, long-term lease housing, and others.

With the revision of the standards, the purchase timing, which was previously "after 20% progress rate," will be moved forward to the "general sale period" to facilitate smooth move-in.

Previously, public housing contracts were signed after 70-80% progress, causing move-in delays compared to general sale units, which led to issues such as maintenance fees during the vacancy period.

The number of required submission documents will be simplified from nine to five. This improvement eliminates unnecessary duplicate submissions of documents such as housing sales (purchase) contracts, project implementation approval (permit) documents, and management disposition plan approvals that the city or district offices already hold or can verify.

Additionally, the city plans to ensure that public housing construction is not omitted during the building permit process by requiring district building review committees to confirm the inclusion of public housing construction and seek cooperation from related professional organizations such as local architectural societies.

Through this, the city aims to prevent situations where public housing construction does not occur in small-scale housing construction projects approved by district authorities despite excellent location and residential conditions due to procedural difficulties.

To improve public housing quality, the city will also reflect the installation costs of built-in appliances and furniture in the public housing purchase price.

Basic items include installing system air conditioners, built-in wardrobes, and kitchen gas cooktops, and for studio units under 32㎡, refrigerators and washing machines will also be built-in.

When signing the public housing sales contract, the items will be negotiated with the project implementer and added to the construction cost, included in the purchase price. The city expects that about 4.05 million KRW per unit for public housing under 32㎡ will be reflected in the cost.

Han Byung-yong, Director of the Seoul Housing Policy Office, said, "We expect that improving the public housing purchase standards will further activate public housing construction in private construction projects," adding, "We will continue to secure high-quality, comfortable public housing and strive for social mix where public and private sale units coexist harmoniously."

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