[EDITORIALS]Housing policy unfair

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[EDITORIALS]Housing policy unfair

Government policy alternatives on the soaring real estate market provoke worries because of the sideeffects that seem inevitable on a long-term basis.
First of all, the government should not take the financial burden of constructing infrastructure for new town development areas with taxpayers’ money. That simply is not fair.
Why should taxpayers support the owners of apartments that will be built in the new towns? Until now, the owners have paid the costs not only for the roads inside a town but also for constructing roads that connect to surrounding regions.
Also, in a reconstructed complex, the residents pay the infrastructure cost as a whole.
The plan to raise the floor area ratio is ridiculous as well. The government says that the purpose is to drag down housing prices.
In order to make the transportation flow flexible, the ratio in midtown areas should be adjusted to be higher than in the suburbs.
Raising the ratio by allowing reconstruction in those downtown areas including Gangnam should be efficient and beneficial both in reducing the transportation burden and in countering the ever-increasing demand for housing in those areas.
The policy to loosen the requirement for secure parking spaces is also problematic.
It will definitely lead to those multi-housing areas becoming slums in the very near future. The price rise came from decent apartment residential areas, not from those multi-housing areas.
Thus the policy to get rid of the requirements for secure parking lots would result only in unexpected sideeffects.
The housing loans issue needs to be tackled by the authorities with all their efforts and means.
Advertisements offering loans for more than 90 percent of the price of a housing unit are everywhere.
When the price structure breaks down, this will cause a devastating blow to the housing loan system. The experience of Japan after the bursting of its bubble mustoffer valuable lessons in that sense.
Housing buyers should have a reasonable perception of the catastrophic risks that might come from impulsive buying without careful calculation regarding changes in interest rates for the loans and a possible economic slowdown.
An increase in housing supply together with the rise of interest rates for housing loans can always be used to drop the housing prices.
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