Recently, there has been a controversy over the’raising the house price’, which is a method of canceling the contract suddenly after reporting the actual highest price transaction. Central photo
In the real estate market these days,’reporting the actual transaction price’ is a hot topic. The government and the ruling party are raising their voices, saying, “The cause of the skyrocketing house prices is the manipulation of market prices by speculators.” The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that it will conduct a comprehensive planning investigation for three months by catching a suspicion of “raising the house price” of sudden cancellation after reporting that the actual transaction was made at the highest price ever.
Government, ruling party “House prices skyrocket due to speculators manipulating market prices”
Detecting suspicious cases of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport
Cotton bat punishment, government system loopholes, etc. still remain
Expert “Strong punishment and actual transaction reporting system should be reformed”
The actual transaction price posted on the public system operated by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is the criterion for judging the market price. However, because the government system is not elaborate, there is a possibility that the’false transaction’ rather than the’real transaction’ may be turned into an actual transaction. It is said that the market disruption of artificially raising the price of a specific apartment by exploiting the loopholes of the current system is being carried out openly, and this controversy has been around for three years. However, it is pointed out that the government has increased side effects while coping with ease, and that the recently announced supplementary measures also have many loopholes.
Here are some cases of suspicion of “raising house prices” in which the actual transaction abused registration. One of the apartments in the Gwangjin House Tori Han River apartment in Jayang-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, was reported as an actual transaction for 1.76 billion won in August last year. It was the highest transaction price ever, which was 260 million won higher than the apartment transaction price of the same area two months ago. Since then, a transaction for this area apartment was made at the end of December of last year for 1.78 billion won, raising the reported price. However, the transaction in August (1.76 billion won), which was previously reported as a transaction, was suddenly canceled at the end of January this year.
If the transaction was canceled at the end of January was a’false transaction for raising quotes’, the buyer and seller who signed a contract at the end of last December accepted the false transaction price as a market price. According to the office of the Democratic Party’s Assemblyman Chun Joon-ho, Seocho-gu was 66.7% and Gangnam-gu also recorded 63% of the highest priced transactions canceled in this way.
Suspicion of “raising house prices” through manipulation of the actual transaction price was raised in 2018 as well. At that time, the government started to improve the system along with a comprehensive investigation. In February of last year, the Real Estate Transaction Reporting Act was amended to shorten the deadline for reporting actual transactions to’within 30 days’ from the date of signing the contract, and put an obligation to report even if the reported transaction contract is invalid, canceled or cancelled. In addition, from February this year, the actual transaction report of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport has been made available to confirm the’whether or not’ and’the date of the reason for cancellation’ in the open system. The cancellation history was disclosed for the cancellation report.
However, due to the punishment of the cotton bat, it is possible to manipulate the market price through’raising the house price’ if you are still mindful. Even if a false report is caught, a maximum fine of 30 million won is imposed under the current law. The Real Estate Transaction Reporting Act, initiated by the National Assembly last year, included a sanctions provision that allowed a fine of 30 million won or less and imprisonment for up to three years, but the handling of the related legislation is sluggish. Lee Kwang-soo, senior researcher at Mirae Asset Daewoo, said, “Since 2018, when the real estate market sellers (suppliers) began to lead, there were market disruptions such as price fixing and false reports.” “Would you mind paying a fine of 10,000 won?” he said.
On December 6, last year, the actual transaction price was posted at a real estate agency in Songpa-gu, Seoul. yunhap news
In fact, the JoongAng Ilbo surveyed the actual transactions of apartment sales across the country from February to December last year, and it was found that out of 38,417 apartments reported for cancellation, 3,707 cases, or 10%, took more than 90 days to report the cancellation. 512 cases exceeded 180 days. On February 25, last year, the Sindo Branew apartment in Gyeyang-gu, Incheon, which was registered as a transaction for 395 million won (with an exclusive area of 84.9m2), was canceled on the 22nd of last month after 363 days. The real estate transaction reporting law revised last year only states that “the transaction party must report to the relevant government office within 30 days from the date the cancellation is confirmed.” If the parties to the transaction claim that the reason for termination has occurred after 11 months of the contract, there is no way to prevent a transaction that has not been made for a year or so even if it is guided as a’real transaction’.
There is a possibility that the actual transaction will not be reported at all after falsely registering the actual transaction. At the time of the controversy over’raising house prices’ in 2018, there was no obligation to report cancellation even if there was a reason for canceling the actual transaction. In order to prevent false reports by exploiting this point, an obligation to report cancellation was newly established two years later. However, there is no post-confirmation system, such as registration confirmation, so it is difficult to identify this even if the parties to the transaction do not report cancellation.
An official from the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs said, “It is difficult to realistically grasp the extent to which the cancellation report has not been fulfilled,” and said, “It is true that information linkage between government ministries was insufficient due to technical limitations.” He explained, “In consultation with the court administration, we plan to start strengthening the linkage between the actual transaction information and the Supreme Court registered information.”
Experts point out that even now, strong penalties for market disturbances should be created and the actual transaction reporting system should be reorganized. Research Fellow Lee Kwang-soo emphasized, “Not only should the government find faults and punish them after death, but make strong precedent regulations.” Real Today, Jae-Hyun Jang, head of the information business division, suggested, “After paying the balance, we must ensure that the actual transaction report is processed at the same time as registration.”
Reporter Kim Won [email protected]
