South Korea's financial regulator is considering managing group mortgage loans for residential officetels separately, following a similar move for newly built apartments.
The Financial Services Commission is reviewing a plan to exclude group loans for residential officetels from lenders' overall household lending targets, financial industry sources said on the 13th. In August, the FSC decided to exclude housing-related group loans from those firm-by-firm caps, but officetels — classified as quasi-housing under the Housing Act — were left out.
Regulators see the easing as consistent with the aim of the Aug. 13 policy package, which centers on expanding housing supply. At a recent household debt review meeting chaired by the FSC, non-bank lenders proposed that officetel group loans also be exempted from the volume caps, according to sources. Large residential officetel projects such as Mokdong Yunseul Xi, which went on presale this month, have drawn attention, but some developments have run into trouble securing loan approvals.
Group loans for residential officetels are currently difficult to obtain from mutual finance institutions. Those lenders halted group lending early this year and resumed it about six months later in August, after housing-related group loans were removed from the volume management targets. The exemption, however, applied only to mortgage loans. Financial authorities recently raised some of the volume targets, but the additional room secured is not large, sources said. "Easing the rules on housing group loans was ultimately about spurring apartment supply," a financial regulatory official said. "Residential officetels are essentially the same."
