People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok on Monday criticized KB Kookmin Bank's decision to cut the maximum mortgage loan limit from 600 million won ($399,000) to 300 million won, saying the government had "kicked away the very ladder people were struggling to climb, let alone build a proper one."
Jang made the remarks at a PPP supreme council meeting at the National Assembly, calling the move "the result of the Lee Jae Myung administration's loan tightening policy."
"Real buyers who have already paid deposits and are preparing to settle the balance will have to borrow from family — or, if that fails, look for high-interest loans — and if even that doesn't work, they will ultimately lose their deposits," he said. "Home prices have been driven to record highs, jeonse and monthly rent options have been wiped out, and now people can't even buy a home."
He added that the policy "fails to rein in home prices while squeezing ordinary end-users." He also criticized President Lee directly, saying Lee had called the disappearance of jeonse and monthly rent options a "normalization of real estate" and claimed the record surge in home prices was "well-managed."
On a real estate forum President Lee is set to host on July 23, Jang said it would amount to "a foregone-conclusion forum where he just says what he wants and justifies his real estate policy — a forum to lecture the public." He also accused the administration of pushing higher property holding taxes, abolishing long-term special supply allocations and punitive tax rates, and ultimately "shifting the blame for policy failures onto the public."
PPP floor leader Jung Seok-jun also weighed in, saying Seoul real estate prices had risen 8.59 percent in the Lee government's first year — "the highest level ever recorded based on the Seoul real estate transaction index." He added that jeonse listings, "the ladder to homeownership," had all but dried up while monthly rents were skyrocketing.
Jung said the Lee administration was already being recorded alongside the Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in governments as presiding over real estate collapses. "The reason the Democratic Party's three-generation inheritance of real estate failure keeps happening is simple," he said. "They are trapped in the dogma that rising home prices are caused by speculative forces, so they block the expansion of private housing supply and stick to policies centered on excessive regulation and tax hikes."
He also said the upcoming forum was "nothing more than a trial balloon and public opinion buildup to justify the tax bomb already signaled for late July and early August." Jung urged the government to scrap the excessive regulations imposed over the past year and shift real estate policy toward expanding private housing supply.
mp1256@heraldcorp.com
