Housing Price Fixing Found in Metropolitan Area

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation announced on July 21 that it has tracked down price-fixing activities among residents of apartments in Seoul and the metropolitan area such as Incheon and Gyeonggi Province. The number of illegal price-fixing cases has reached up to 58, including Daewoo Prugio Apartments in Gwanak-gu in Seoul, and Ilseong Apartments in Jangan-gu, Suwon in Gyeonggi Province.

The current trading price of these apartments is going to be posted on the homepage of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation (www.moct.go.kr) and their market prices cannot be made public on the website of real estate information businesses such as Kookmin Bank and Real Estate 114. However, a fierce controversy is likely to be stirred as residents in these apartments strongly rage at the real estate policy and some of them even deny any wrongdoing.

The ministry said, “Among 110 illegitimate cases reported to the anti-housing price fixing center, we have conducted a ground-level investigation into 96 cases and identified 58 bid rigging cases and have cracked down on 13 cases in Seoul, one in Incheon, and 44 in Gyeonggi Province. In particular, 35 cases in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.” An official of the ministry said, “Some of them fixed their housing prices to sell at the twice level of a current trading price in the housing market that buyers and sellers of apartments report to their provincial governments.”

According to the ministry, it has recently founded a poster in an apartment complex of 50-pyeong located in Haengshin 1-dong, Deokyang-gu in Gyeonggi, reading, “Don’t sell your house at below 750 million won.” That figure is one and half or even twice of a current trading market value (370 to 500 million won).

Joong-Hyun Park sanjuck@donga.com sukim@donga.com