The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Wednesday it will eliminate two regulations that have added time and cost burdens to urban renewal projects, a move expected to ease the financial load on residents and accelerate project timelines.
The two measures are designated as task No. 195 — a rationalization of the construction cost verification system for publicly supported renewal projects — and task No. 196, a streamlining of the documents required to obtain approval for forming a reconstruction preparatory committee.
Under the current system, publicly supported urban renewal projects must undergo mandatory construction cost verification before the pre-sale announcement to association members, regardless of whether construction costs have actually increased. The city plans to revise its contractor selection standards for publicly supported renewal projects by the second half of this year, shifting the verification process in a direction that respects the autonomy of associations.
The publicly supported urban renewal regime is a system under which the city supports the entire project process — from the planning stage through completion — to help redevelopment and reconstruction projects move forward quickly.
Construction cost verification requires the project operator to submit permit documents, construction contract documents and detailed cost breakdowns to a verification body. The body then reviews the appropriateness of construction volumes and unit prices by work category, as well as contract terms related to construction costs. The process typically takes 60 to 75 days and generates verification fees based on the total construction cost.
Critics in the field have long argued that requiring verification before the pre-sale announcement — even when there has been no substantive increase in construction costs and no request from association members — amounts to a blanket procedural requirement that ignores site-specific conditions, and have called for easing the resulting time and cost burdens.
To address this, the city will revise the relevant contractor selection standards to change the verification process from a mandatory step to a discretionary one. The change is expected to relieve associations that have struggled with the time and cost demands of the verification process and allow renewal projects to proceed more quickly.
The city will also simplify the application documents required to obtain approval for forming a preparatory committee — the initial stage of a redevelopment or reconstruction project. Applicants have been required to submit multiple official documents, including cadastral records, real estate registry extracts and building registers, and were also obligated to include the name of the household head for each property owner on the ownership roster. That requirement in turn meant submitting resident registration certificates separately to confirm the household head for each individual owner. Critics have argued, however, that household head information is not essential to determining whether a preparatory committee should be approved at this early stage.
Reflecting those concerns, the city has removed the "household head name" field from the property ownership roster to streamline administrative procedures and improve efficiency at the initial stage of renewal projects. The change is expected to reduce the document submission burden on associations and residents, lower the barrier to entry at the start of the renewal process, and allow projects to get off the ground more quickly.
"We will continue to identify unreasonable regulations from the perspective of residents and actively support Seoul's urban renewal projects so they can proceed with greater speed and efficiency," said Jo Wan-seok, the city's director of regulatory innovation planning.
ikson@heraldcorp.com
