The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on the 18th it has prepared the Second Basic Plan to Promote the Real Estate Service Industry (2026–2030), a five-year initiative to overhaul the structure of Korea's real estate service market and create an environment where consumers can feel secure.
Set to be announced on the 19th, the plan focuses on market innovation through advanced technology and restoring public trust, with an emphasis on driving changes that people can clearly feel.
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), Korea's real estate market is facing a major turning point due to the rapid development of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), greater volatility in domestic and global economies, and diversified demand stemming from demographic shifts. In response, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) set a new vision of building a real estate service market at a global level that leads digital-based industrial innovation and a transparent market order, and decided to fully roll out three main strategies and 11 key tasks.
In particular, recognizing that the real estate market is led by the private sector, the government actively reflected on-the-ground industry input from the outset. Since 2025, the government has held more than 20 relay roundtables by sector to identify market difficulties and craft regulatory improvements, and further strengthened policy execution through consultations with experts from various fields.
The core of the five-year plan starts with fully supporting a Real Estate Big Data Platform so corporations can use data to create new value in the digital era. Managed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), the platform currently integrates and presents a total of 279 types of data generated by the private sector, including development, public transactions, and management, and since January it has been operated as a Data Open Market where anyone can freely buy and sell data.
To improve corporations' access to data, the government will diversify delivery methods, including developing open APIs. It will also introduce AI functions to the platform to support smart search and recommendations, and tailored processing and integration, laying the groundwork for emerging industries such as proptech to grow. The Excellent Real Estate Service Business Certification system, designed to foster capable corporations, will be overhauled. Moving away from the previous model that granted certification to anyone meeting minimum criteria, it will shift to a selection system that carefully evaluates service quality and performance to choose elite providers and expand incentives.
The government will also reform the structure of the traditional real estate industry to improve competitiveness and restore consumer trust. It will raise penalties for market-disrupting behavior such as collusion among licensed agents, and secure transparency by enabling QR code verification of appraisal reports, adopting a system to verify development project track records, and introducing an integrated management system for real estate project financing (PF). It will strengthen disclosure obligations for real estate investment trusts (REITs) and bolster board oversight to improve market health, while clarifying the legal basis for sales agency businesses to prevent consumer harm.
To build a safe, demand-centered transaction order, the government will upgrade AI-based monitoring systems and concentrate on preventing jeonse fraud. AI will analyze sales report data in real time to automatically flag suspicious transaction signs and identify types of illegal conduct, significantly improving monitoring accuracy. To prevent equity-splitting scheme real estate fraud and losses from direct transactions, the government will also impose stricter responsibilities on sales corporations and direct-transaction platform operators to display and explain listing information, creating a safer environment for deals.
Han Jeong-hui, director of the Land Policy Division at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), said, "The second plan to promote the real estate service industry is not merely industrial support, but an innovation strategy to fundamentally transform the industry's structure," adding, "We will reshape the market based on data and AI, boldly weed out opaque practices, and build a sound market that the public can trust."