It was learned that the outstanding balance of mortgage loan taken out by multiple home owners from commercial banks has more than doubled over the past three years.
According to the financial sector on the 22nd, the outstanding balance of mortgage loan for multiple home owners (individuals owning two or more homes) at the five major banks (KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, NH Nonghyup) totaled about 3.64686 trillion won as of the end of January. That is up about 130% from the end of January 2023 (1.58565 trillion won), when mortgage loan for multiple home owners began to surge in earnest.
During the same period, the increase was larger compared with the roughly 20% rise in the total mortgage loan balance at the five major banks from the 513 trillion won range to the 610 trillion won range. The outstanding balance of mortgage loan for multiple home owners had been growing gradually, but it began to increase in earnest in early 2023 when the government drastically eased lending regulations for multiple home owners.
At the time, as concerns about a slump in the dwellings market spread even to the Seoul metropolitan area due to the effects of high interest rates and bad loans in real estate project financing (PF), the government loosened regulations in an attempt to engineer a soft landing for the real estate market. As a result, the outstanding balance of mortgage loan for multiple home owners jumped by more than 1 trillion won per year, from 1.54202 trillion won at the end of 2022 to 2.60688 trillion won at the end of 2023, and 3.84028 trillion won at the end of 2024.
Afterward, as the household debt issue came to the fore and banks tightened the loan limit for multiple home owners again, the balance inched up to 3.90867 trillion won by the end of the first half of last year. Then, following the June 27 measures that banned new mortgage loan for multiple home owners in the Seoul metropolitan area and regulated zones, it turned to a decline and shrank to the 3.6 trillion won range.