Seoul will add 17,500 more units of long-term jeonse housing II "Mirinae House" for newlyweds by 2030. The city is expanding an installment payment plan for deposits to lower the initial lump-sum burden at move-in, and is also reviewing a measure to include children born before move-in when calculating priority purchase rights.
Seoul said on the 1st that since first supplying Mirinae House in July 2024, it has provided a total of 7,108 units through Aug. this year. It plans to secure about 4,000 units each year and add 17,500 units by 2030.
Mirinae House is the city's long-term jeonse dwellings that allow newlyweds to live for an extended period with a deposit below market rates and offer a chance to purchase the dwellings with priority based on the number of children born.
To reduce tenants' initial cash burden, the city is also expanding the "deposit installment payment plan" introduced in Apr. It allows paying part of the deposit at move-in and the remainder over a set period.
At Jamsil Le-El in Songpa District, the first complex to adopt the plan, 74 of 98 Mirinae House units (76%) applied for the program. These households can now pay in installments a deposit of about 15.8 billion won that they would have otherwise had to pay in a lump sum at move-in.
Citywide, 489 of 533 Mirinae House contractors (92%) used the installment plan from Apr. to Aug. The partitioned initial deposit totaled 76.5 billion won.
The city is also reviewing a plan to broaden the criteria for counting children toward priority purchase rights. Currently, in principle, the rights are granted based on children born after the date of the tenant recruitment announcement. Starting this year, for households with four or more children, Seoul decided to include children born before move-in, and it is looking into further expanding the scope.
Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, visited Jamsil Le-El in Sincheon-dong, Songpa District, that day to tour Mirinae House residential facilities and a public childcare center and held a meeting with newlywed tenants.
Jamsil Le-El has 1,865 units in total, including 98 Mirinae House units and 100 existing long-term jeonse dwellings. At the meeting, tenants said that being able to live stably for a long time allowed them to make concrete plans for childbirth. On the other hand, some noted that, due to the recent rise in housing prices, the financial burden of preparing to buy a home in the future remains heavy.
In a survey conducted by the city in Jan. of this year among Mirinae House tenants, 79 of 216 responding households (36.6%) said they had a child after moving in. A total of 84.7% said they plan to have children in the future.
Births and marriages in Seoul have also been on the rise recently. Seoul's total fertility rate rose from 0.55 in 2023 to 0.58 in 2024 and 0.63 last year. In the first half of this year, the number of births increased 18.7% and marriages 10.9% year-over-year.
Oh said, "When housing is unstable, it is hard to plan marriage and childbirth, and even if you have children, it is difficult to raise them stably," adding, "We will strengthen the housing ladder so that newlyweds can feel secure, have and raise children, and even dream of owning a home."
He added, "Alongside Mirinae House, which offers excellent locations and high-quality dwellings at reasonable housing costs, we will continue to expand public housing favored by low-income people without homes and the middle class."