Seoul speeds redevelopment delivery

Seoul is handing a bigger role to its housing corporation to push stalled redevelopment projects toward construction faster. (biz.chosun.com) The Seoul Metropolitan Government said Seoul Housing and Urban Development Corporation, known as SH, will take on feasibility reviews for management disposition plans, a late-stage approval that checks project costs, member payments and sales eligibility. City officials said the main review can be cut to about one month after an association files, down from an average of six months. (biz.chosun.com) Seoul has also moved to support residents who need cash to move out before demolition starts. In February, Mayor Oh Se-hoon said the city would allocate 50 billion won from a housing fund this year for relocation loans as part of a plan to break ground on 85,000 homes across 85 redevelopment and reconstruction sites by 2028. (koreajoongangdaily.joins.com) The bottleneck is not only paperwork. A Seoul survey released on January 28 found 39 of 43 redevelopment zones scheduled for resident relocation this year were facing delays tied to relocation-loan rules, affecting about 31,000 planned housing units. (en.sedaily.com) Those rules were tightened after government measures announced on June 27 and October 15, with Seoul saying loan-to-value ratios were set at 40% for single-home owners and 0% for multi-home owners, with a 6 billion won ceiling. The city said associations were turning to secondary lenders backed by builder guarantees, which would raise interest costs for members. (en.sedaily.com) Seoul’s push comes after a sharp drop in housing starts. The city said groundbreaking volume fell from about 24,000 units in 2021 to 11,000 in 2024, and to 6,000 through September 2025. (koreajoongangdaily.joins.com) Redevelopment in Seoul usually means tearing down aging low-rise neighborhoods or apartment blocks and rebuilding them at higher density, but each project passes through years of approvals, financing and relocation before construction can begin. Seoul said it reviewed 253 projects and picked 85 where faster administrative handling could move starts up by as much as a year. (koreajoongangdaily.joins.com) SH’s expanded role is aimed at one of the most crowded choke points in that process. The city said requests for feasibility reviews are rising as redevelopment districts expand and construction costs lift member contributions, while the Korea Real Estate Board had only 11 specialists at its Daegu headquarters and two at its Seoul branch handling the work. (biz.chosun.com) For now, Seoul is trying to keep existing projects from slipping further behind rather than launching a new wave from scratch. The city’s message in March and February was consistent: speed up late-stage reviews, ease relocation financing and get projects already in the pipeline to the groundbreaking stage. (biz.chosun.com) (koreajoongangdaily.joins.com)