▲ Apartment and villa complexes in Seoul viewed from Seoul Sky at Lotte World Tower in Songpa-gu, Seoul
Leading indicators for housing supply in Seoul have shown improvement, with housing starts rising by more than 40% and permits increasing compared to last year.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that housing permits in Seoul totaled 28,634 households and housing starts reached 19,507 households from January to July this year.
Compared to the same period last year, permits increased by 6.1% and starts surged by 44.4%.
These figures are also 36.7% and 34.6% higher, respectively, than the average for the same period over the past three years.
The city explained that the increase in permits indicates a steady securing of project volumes to support future housing supply expansion.
Because housing starts mean actual construction has begun, they typically gauge the volume and speed of housing that will be supplied years later.
Among this year's housing starts, apartments accounted for 14,995 households, a 36.1% increase from last year.
Among them, redevelopment, reconstruction, and other maintenance project volumes reached 12,211 households, accounting for 81.4%.
Complexes with 1,000 or more households that began construction this year include Heukseok District 11 (1,515 households), Sillim District 2 (1,430 households), and Junggye Bon-dong (3,178 households).
The proportion of maintenance projects was also high in permits.
Out of 23,480 apartment permits, 19,447 households, or 82.8%, were from maintenance projects.
Jamsil Jugong Complex 5 (6,411 households), Hannam District 5 (2,592 households), and Goryeo Saemaul (1,678 households), among others, received permits this year.
However, apartment permits themselves decreased by 1.6% compared to the same period last year, while increasing by 27.6% compared to the average of the past three years.
Supply indicators for villas and other non-apartment housing, which had been sluggish for a while, showed a clear rebound.
Non-apartment permits from January to July stood at 5,154 households, up 64.4% from last year and 101.9% higher than the three-year average.
Housing starts also rose by 80.9% year-on-year to 4,512 households.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government attributes this to supply-expansion policies, such as Rapid Integrated Planning (Shin-tong Planning) and shortened maintenance project timelines, which have helped accelerate project implementation.
At the same time, the increase in permits and starts is the result of multiple factors combined, including market conditions and project schedules for individual developments.
Amid this trend, actual apartment moving-in volumes are scheduled to welcome new residents totaling 48,000 households over the next two years: 26,000 households this year and 22,000 households next year.
With a target of starting construction on 310,000 homes by 2031, the city plans to upgrade the maintenance project process management system to the vice-mayor level and operate a special process promotion meeting in cooperation with autonomous districts to inspect delayed project sites.
Myung Noh-joon, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Government's Housing Bureau, said, "We will closely manage major projects such as maintenance initiatives to ensure that the upward trend in permits and starts translates into actual move-ins."
(Photo provided by Seoul Metropolitan Government, Yonhap News)
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