[Anchor]
Although the government expanded the total volume of household loans in August, the barriers to obtaining loans for purchasing a home remain high. However, public institutions have continued excessive in-house loan programs, ignoring even government guidelines.
Reporter Min Gyeongho has the details.
[Reporter]
It has been one year since loan regulations were implemented in regulated areas in the metropolitan region.
While home prices have surged during this period, loan limits remain restricted, making it difficult to establish purchasing plans.
[Seo Ji-yeon / Yangcheon-gu, Seoul: As regulations have become too severe and loan amounts are heavily restricted, figuring out how to make a plan is difficult... There are more and more things we need to discuss with our family.]
As a result, interest in in-house loan programs operated as employee benefits has grown even higher.
For in-house loans by public institutions, the government maintains separate criteria to ensure fairness in loan regulations and eliminate blind spots.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance established a guideline in 2021 stating that loans of up to 70 million won per person should be provided only when homeless employees purchase housing of 85 square meters or smaller, and the interest rate must be higher than the bank household loan interest rate published by the Bank of Korea.
However, even financial public institutions were violating these guidelines.
Korea Asset Management Corporation applied an interest rate of 3.3 percent per annum for loans of up to 160 million won, and until the year before last, employees could receive in-house loans even for properties exceeding 85 square meters.
From 2022 to this year, it lent approximately 10.8 billion won to 92 people.
The Korea Credit Guarantee Fund lent approximately 1.5 billion won to 14 people with a limit of 130 million won per person from 2021 until last year, and Korea Minting, Security Printing & ID Card Operating Corporation applied a 2.5 percent interest rate until last month.
Even when guidelines were violated, the only penalty public institutions faced was a deduction of 1 point out of 100 total points in institutional evaluations.
[Jeon Hyun-heui / Member of the National Assembly Committee on Political Affairs (Democratic Party): The public is subjected to real estate loan regulations, but the fact that excessive in-house loans took place inside the public institutions that apply those very standards is problematic.]
The institutions in question responded that they face difficulties in negotiating loan condition changes with labor unions and will endeavor to comply with the guidelines.
(Video reporting: Lee Moo-jin | Video editing: Kim Yoon-sung)
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