Young real estate agent's blunt pitch on capital gains tax draws 'will review' from Lee

A call to ease the capital gains tax burden on homebuyers emerged Thursday at a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport briefing presided over by President Lee Jae Myung. The suggestion came from a participant who argued that young people face a double bind: multi-home owners are holding back listings because of heavy capital gains tax liabilities, while tightened lending rules leave buyers with nowhere to turn.

Ko Ga-yeon, a licensed real estate agent who attended the briefing as part of a public observer panel, said young people "are caught in a double bind — loans are blocked even when they find a home they want, and there are simply no homes available to buy because multi-home owners won't list their properties due to the heavy capital gains tax burden."

Ko urged the government to consider a more flexible approach. "If capital gains taxes are eased flexibly to encourage sales, transactions will pick up and tax revenue from acquisition and capital gains taxes could actually increase," she said. "As a working real estate agent, I would suggest that the practical and flexible policy is to ease the property-holding tax burden on owner-occupiers who spent a lifetime working to buy a single home, while progressively raising the holding tax on multi-home owners to curb speculation."

The proposal runs counter to the current administration's direction, as the government has recently been pushing to strengthen both capital gains and property-holding taxes.

President Lee said he would "take everything that has been said into consideration and review it."

Calls for expanding metropolitan transit infrastructure in new towns were also raised. Kim Woori, a resident of Dongtan-gu in Hwaseong, said Dongtan is "a representative new town whose population has grown rapidly, but whose transport infrastructure has not kept pace." She added that "the success of a new town is not complete with housing supply alone — it is only complete when transport infrastructure is in place."

She went on to say that many Dongtan residents rely on public bicycles or taxis just to catch a bus during rush hour, and called on the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, local governments and the Metropolitan Area Transportation Commission to "move more swiftly" on expanding metropolitan bus services during peak hours, adjusting routes based on demand and improving transfer convenience.

President Lee called the issue "an important task."

At the same briefing, held at the Cheong Wa Dae banquet hall, Lee also directly reviewed the design plans for a presidential office in Sejong and the development plan for the Saemangeum reclamation project. He directed officials to develop the Sejong office as a landmark building reflecting public input, and to adjust the timeline and scale of the Saemangeum reclamation to accelerate the project.