"We urge a complete paradigm shift away from current regulations that strangle lending, so that younger generations in their 20s and 30s — who have had few opportunities to build assets — do not lose hope."
"It is devastating that even moving into a single home you actually live in — not speculation — requires racing to the bank and playing a guessing game over loans. Why should people moving in the second half of the year be stuck with worse loan terms?"
Posts like these have flooded the government's public feedback website, budongsan-toronhoe.kr, ahead of a national real estate policy forum set for Thursday. While the government has been tightening mortgage regulations and pushing for higher property holding taxes to stabilize home prices, voices from the market are growing louder in demanding deregulation instead.
As of Monday morning, the site had received a total of 2,010 policy proposals. Of those, nearly half — 46 percent, or 584 submissions — addressed housing finance, while proposals on housing supply and regulation accounted for 29 percent (584 submissions) and real estate taxation for 23 percent (482 submissions).
Among the housing finance proposals, the most common request was to ease the overall cap on mortgage loans. Some called for owner-occupiers with outstanding balances to be exempted from bank mortgage limit reductions, while others asked for higher ceilings on collective loans, including interim and final payment loans.
There were also calls to restore jeonse-exit loans — currently capped at 100 million won ($67,400) — to normal levels for genuine end-users. Proposals demanding the reinstatement of the shared-equity mortgage program, introduced under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and later scrapped, continued to pour in as well.
![[Source: budongsan-toronhoe.kr]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/07/20/news-p.v1.20260720.00775957cf6a43d3a1d68f5747dfd15f_P1.png)
Other proposals included calls for a temporary special law to boost housing supply, as well as opposition to the reconstruction excess profit recapture scheme and restrictions on transferring union membership status. On the supply side, some urged that non-apartment homes be "boldly excluded from the property count" when calculating acquisition and transfer taxes, while others called for active greenbelt releases in areas such as Gangdong-gu to kick-start development.
Grievances over the government's move to formally tighten taxes on "non-resident single homeowners" — those who rent out their home and live elsewhere — were also raised in force. One commenter identified as Park wrote, "Is it a crime to rent out my home and rent somewhere else myself?" and pleaded, "Please stop pitting non-resident single homeowners against everyone else."
In response to the government's announcement that it would raise holding taxes even on owner-occupiers of ultra-high-priced homes, one person wrote: "I'm in my late 50s and finally managed to buy a home where I can at least rest — and now they're talking about raising holding taxes and slapping heavy levies on a single quality home. It's utterly bleak. I can't see a way forward."
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport plans to gather additional public input before presenting the findings at Thursday's national real estate forum, which President Lee Jae Myung will chair. A tax reform package is expected to be announced later this month once the forum concludes.
Earlier, Kim Yong-beom, the presidential chief policy secretary, officially announced Sunday a policy of differentiated taxation through higher holding taxes on single homes, saying that "even a single owner-occupied home, if it is an ultra-high-priced property, should be treated differently from ordinary housing."
hss@heraldcorp.com
