Deposit installment payments first applied at Jamsil Le El, easing 15.8 billion won burden

36.6% of residents gave birth after moving in; 84.7% plan to have children

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon tours the neighborhood surrounding a non-apartment Mirinaezip unit in Munjeong-dong, Songpa-gu, last August with Seoul Baby Ambassadors. [Yonhap]
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon tours the neighborhood surrounding a non-apartment Mirinaezip unit in Munjeong-dong, Songpa-gu, last August with Seoul Baby Ambassadors. [Yonhap]

The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to supply an additional 17,500 units of Mirinaezip — its long-term jeonse housing program for newlyweds — by 2030. The city is also expanding its deposit installment payment scheme and reviewing whether children born before a household's move-in date should count toward the priority purchase rights calculation.

Since launching Mirinaezip in July 2024, the city has supplied a total of 7,108 units through August this year. It plans to secure about 4,000 units annually to reach the additional 17,500-unit target by 2030, the city announced Tuesday.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon visited the Mirinaezip units at Jamsil Le El in Sincheon-dong, Songpa-gu, on Tuesday morning to inspect the residential facilities and hold a roundtable with resident newlywed couples. He listened to their experiences navigating childbirth, child-rearing and the challenges of homeownership, as well as their policy suggestions.

The city is reviewing whether children born before a household's move-in date should be included in the child count used to determine priority purchase rights. Currently, eligibility is based on children born after the date of the tenant recruitment announcement. Since early this year, households with four or more children have already been allowed to count children born before move-in.

Jamsil Le El is a 1,865-unit complex that includes 98 Mirinaezip units and 100 long-term jeonse units. It is the first Mirinaezip complex to apply the deposit installment payment system the city introduced last April.

Of the 98 Mirinaezip units at Jamsil Le El, 74 households — 76 percent — applied for the installment payment option. Those households were able to spread out deposits totaling about 15.8 billion won ($11.5 million) that would otherwise have been due at move-in.

Across Seoul, 489 of the 533 Mirinaezip households that signed contracts between April and August this year — 92 percent — used the installment payment option. The deferred initial payments totaled 76.5 billion won.

Oh toured the complex's public daycare center, dining cafe and residential spaces before sitting down with resident couples. Residents said the prospect of long-term, stable housing had allowed them to make concrete plans for having children. They also cited the complex's proximity to Jamsil Station and its on-site facilities — including the public daycare center and a small library — as key advantages.

Some residents noted, however, that rising real estate prices still make long-term homeownership a heavy burden. Oh said he heard concerns that even families with multiple children who qualify to purchase a unit at below-market prices may struggle to secure the necessary funds, and pledged to review support measures to address that.

Alongside Mirinaezip, the city has been expanding support for pregnancy and childbirth, childcare, and work-life balance. It eliminated the income ceiling for infertility treatment subsidies, benefiting about 220,000 people, and distributed transportation allowances to about 210,000 pregnant women and postpartum care subsidies to about 120,000. Starting this year, the transportation allowance is tiered by birth order — 700,000 won for a first child, 800,000 won for a second and 1 million won for a third or higher — while the postpartum care subsidy has been raised to 1 million won ($651) for a first child, 1.2 million won for a second and 1.5 million won for a third or higher.

After birth, the city operates 1,844 public daycare centers along with 426 gap-care facilities, including nighttime, part-time and year-round open centers. It also plans to expand Seoul-style kids cafes and grandparent childcare allowances.

Seoul's total fertility rate rose from 0.55 in 2023 to 0.58 in 2024 and 0.63 last year. In the first half of this year, the number of births was up 18.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, while the number of marriages rose 10.9 percent.

A survey of 216 Mirinaezip households conducted in January this year found that 79 — or 36.6 percent — had given birth after moving in, while 84.7 percent said they planned to have children in the future.

"When housing is unstable, it is hard to plan for marriage and childbirth, and even if you do have a child, it is hard to raise one in a stable environment," Oh said. "We will strengthen the housing ladder so that newlywed couples can feel secure having and raising children while also dreaming of owning their own home."


quq@heraldcorp.com