Published : Aug. 3, 2017 - 10:59
The Moon Jae-in administration will never cease efforts to help stabilize the housing market, a senior official from the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said Thursday, noting the new government has five years to go.
The remarks came one day after the government announced a set of measures to curb a recent spike in home prices that it apparently believes may have been partly caused by speculation.
(Yonhap)
Kim Su-hyun, the top presidential secretary for social affairs, said he was not sure how well the measures will work.
"However, what is certain is that this government will never back down from dealing with real estate prices under any circumstances," he told reporters.
"It has been less than three months since the new government launched). It has at least five years to safely transform the housing market into a new structure through firm and stable means," Kim added.
Kim took responsibility for what he called the failure of the former Roh Moo-hyun administration in stabilizing home prices, noting most of the former administration's measures, partly devised by himself, had focused on the supply and demand side.
"What those measures then had lacked was measures to deal with excess liquidity that eventually triggered the 2008 global financial crisis," he said.
Kim served as a presidential secretary for social affairs under the late former President Roh throughout most of Roh's five-year term between 2003-2008.
He blamed the two former conservative administrations under Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye that followed the liberal Roh government for the latest surge in home prices, insisting the two had removed nearly all restrictions aimed at keeping home prices down and preventing speculation.
The latest housing market measures announced Wednesday sought to reinstate the main ideas of those taken under the Roh administration, Kim acknowledged.
But now they also address the issue of excess liquidity.
Under the latest measures, the loan-to-value and debt-to-income ratios will be reduced to as low as 30 percent for multiple home owners, making it harder for them to borrow money to engage in speculation.
Currently, the LTV ratio is at 70 percent for most homes with the DTI ratio set at 40 percent.
As of end-March, the country's overall household debt came to a record high of 1,360 trillion won ($1,205 trillion), up 11.1 percent from 1,224 trillion won a year earlier. (Yonhap)