[Anchor]

One year has passed since the October 15 real estate measures were introduced. The average sales price of apartments in Seoul has surpassed 1.7 billion won, while the shortage of jeonse and monthly rent homes has worsened.

Reporter Baegun has the details.

[Reporter]

This is an apartment complex with around 2,300 households in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul.

Last November, a unit with a 59-square-meter exclusive area traded at 1.29 billion won. Last month, a similar unit on a comparable floor sold for 1.58 billion won, an increase of nearly 300 million won.

Since the government designated all of Seoul as a regulated zone and reduced mortgage limits a year ago, inquiries from prospective buyers have continued steadily.

[Ha Hye-ryun / Real estate agent in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul: Since this place is under 1.5 billion won, a loan of up to 600 million won is available, so many people have purchased units by utilizing those maximum loans.]

For one year starting from the second week of October last year, Seoul apartment prices rose by more than 11 percent.

That is roughly double the 6.6 percent increase recorded during the preceding 52-week period.

The average sales price of apartments in Seoul jumped by nearly 150 million won over the past year, breaking through the 1.7 billion-won mark.

The number of autonomous districts where the average price exceeds 1.5 billion won has also increased to 13.

As the shortage of jeonse homes intensifies due to stricter actual residency requirements, genuine homebuyers facing mortgage restrictions are turning to relatively affordable regional properties, driving up prices in Seoul's Gangbuk area and the wider metropolitan region.

[Yu Gi-hak / Nowon-gu, Seoul: Loans need to be readily available for us to even dream of buying something. Right now, we cannot even think about it. I am considering moving further out to the outskirts.]

Experts point out that while the October 15 measures successfully curbed speculative demand such as gap investing—buying a home while taking over a tenant's lease—they failed to properly achieve the goal of stabilizing housing prices, and supplementary measures for homeless genuine homebuyers must now be considered.

[Ham Young-jin / Head of Woori Bank Real Estate Research Lab: For first-time homebuyers or those without a home, there is a need to ease LTV (Loan-to-Value) limits slightly or provide some exit routes by allowing them to purchase homes using loans.]

Experts also note that the criteria for low-interest policy loans, for which the pool of eligible recipients has shrunk due to rising home prices, need to be revised to reflect reality.

(Video by Jung Yong-hwa | Graphics by Jegal Chan | VJ by Lee Ji-hwan)