Government Plans 230,000 New Homes for the Seoul Area to Tame Housing Prices

The government unveiled a plan on Thursday to add more than 230,000 homes across Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, its latest attempt to answer soaring housing prices with a promise of more supply, delivered faster than before.

The Land Ministry framed the effort around speed as much as volume. Land Minister Kim Yun-duk said the government wanted to expand the amount of housing available while easing price instability caused by supply and demand mismatches, by minimizing the time lag between policy announcements and completion through what he called groundbreaking changes to the speed of new supply.

Where the homes will come from

The plan draws on several sources. Some 27,000 units are set for three new public housing districts, about 1,000 in Seoul's Gangseo District, roughly 21,700 in Namyangju and about 4,500 in Gwangju, both in Gyeonggi Province.

A larger share comes from speeding up sites already in the pipeline. The government said 89,000 homes would be accelerated at existing locations, among them the Taereung military golf course and Seoul Racecourse Park, land inside the city that can be turned to housing without carving into new ground.

A further 30,000 homes are to come from nonresidential land converted for housing by 2030, including 10,000 within existing new towns, a way of squeezing more homes out of areas that are already built up.

A push to build faster

The centerpiece of the plan is time. The government aims to break ground at the three new districts within three to four years and, more strikingly, to cut the stretch of construction from 68 months to 37, nearly halving the wait between a plan and a finished home.

The urgency reflects a diagnosis. Prices and rents have climbed in part because construction stalled after 2022 and private builders pulled back, leaving demand to pile up against a thin supply. Shortening the pipeline is meant to close that gap before it widens further.

The government's pitch

Kim cast the plan as a division of labor between state and market. By swiftly carrying out what the public sector should do and boldly supporting areas where the private sector does well, he said, the government would do its utmost to ensure a sufficient supply of the homes people want, in the places they want, in a timely manner.

The promise is familiar, and so is the skepticism that greets it. Korea has announced large housing targets before, and the distance between a groundbreaking figure and keys in hand is measured in years. For a government whose standing has slipped on housing, the plan is a bet that this time it can build fast enough for voters to feel the difference.