President Lee Jae-myung on the 20th called for a "blitz on housing supply," ordering officials to mobilize every available option to shorten construction timelines, including the presale of undeveloped land and modular housing. He also instructed them to review expanded financial incentives and legal amendments, along with improvements to land compensation and permitting procedures. The directives reflect a judgment that existing policies alone cannot resolve a structural shortage, and a commitment to concentrate policy resources on expanding housing supply.
At a Cabinet meeting held at the Blue House that day, Lee said: "Do not be bound by existing practices and procedures. Shorten as much as possible the time required for land development, various permits and groundbreaking, and carry out a blitz on supply." At a later roundtable at the Gyeyang new town site in Incheon, Lee said the government typically manages housing supply by groundbreaking, but "the supply benchmark citizens feel should be move-in." He stressed that "the measures already announced must produce visible results that quickly lead to actual move-ins."
His instruction to review the presale of undeveloped land drew particular attention. Under that approach, a public developer supplies land before completing site development, and the developer that receives it takes part in the project. Because site preparation and construction planning can partly proceed in parallel, it is seen as an alternative for shortening housing supply timelines.
Lee also called for changes in construction methods. He confirmed the effect of modular housing on shortening construction periods, as proposed by an expert, and ordered a comprehensive review aimed at building up the market. Modular housing involves manufacturing major components of a building in a factory and assembling them on site, which reduces on-site work. The aim is to reexamine the entire housing supply process, from land development through construction.
Project delays caused by land compensation and legal disputes were also singled out for improvement. Lee ordered that land expropriation and negotiations proceed simultaneously to move up supply timelines. He specifically pointed to projects being delayed by civil suits during the compulsory acquisition process, and instructed officials to review legislative fixes and report back separately. He also ordered an expansion of financial incentives for faster supply.
Lee personally took up organizational and staffing issues at the Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH). He noted that interagency consultations to add LH staff had not been completed, and reviewed the status of securing compensation personnel. He urged attention to working conditions so that employees are not disadvantaged or demoralized during the separation of LH's organization. The remarks appear to reflect a view that accelerating supply first requires the organizational capacity to carry it out.
Lee attributed the current shortage to a supply gap that has accumulated over several years. "From 2022 through last year, permits and groundbreakings for new housing fell by nearly half," he said. "Housing supply takes about three years after permitting, and that is why the shortage is emerging now." Housing permits in Seoul fell from 113,000 units in 2015 to about 42,000 last year, a drop of roughly 63% over a decade. Apartment permits in Seoul also fell 26.3% last year from a year earlier.
Lee made the same point at a tea meeting with reporters the previous day, when he said property supply would "normalize properly from 2028 onward." With a considerable lag before actual move-ins unavoidable, the plan is to pull supply schedules forward as much as possible to ease the imbalance between supply and demand.
The Blue House policy office also plans to keep monitoring how the supply measures are carried out. It will review progress at each stage — site development, permitting, groundbreaking and move-in — and coordinate among ministries to clear away factors causing delays, according to officials. The government held its first regular briefing on housing supply on the 16th and will disclose implementation status twice a month. The president's supply directives, the Blue House's implementation checks and project management by the prime minister's office and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport are to proceed in tandem.
Lee also ordered that the existing target of breaking ground on about 90% of public housing units in the third-phase new towns by 2030 be met without fail. "We must keep our word," he said, calling for faster work at every stage, including planning, land compensation and permitting, and for bold improvements to rules and regulations that block supply.
He also made clear that the speed of supply in the third-phase new towns is the dividing line for the success or failure of housing policy. "If the supply policies already announced are not properly implemented, public trust in housing policy as a whole will inevitably decline," Lee said. He urged officials to prepare infrastructure such as transportation, schools and district heating in Gyeyang, Incheon, in time for December, when 1,285 households will become the first to move into any of the third-phase new towns.
Some caution, however, that the feasibility and project conditions for measures such as presales of undeveloped land and modular housing need close verification. With land compensation and infrastructure delays already piling up in the third-phase new towns, there are concerns that shortening construction periods alone will not quickly fill the supply gap. Lee Eun-hyung, a research fellow at the Korea Research Institute for Construction Policy, said housing quality and living conditions must be secured alongside the pace of supply, and that the feasibility and effects of the measures need to be examined at the same time.