Ground-breakings up 11%, completions down 41%: How Korea's building-materials makers are surviving the gap

Housing ground-breakings have returned to double-digit growth this year, but building-materials companies are finding little reason to celebrate. Their core products — windows, flooring, wallpaper and interior film — are finishing materials installed in the latter stages of construction, meaning a typical three-year lag separates a ground-breaking from the revenue it eventually generates. While waiting for that pipeline to pay off, the industry's major players are pivoting hard toward consumer-facing renovation demand, partial remodeling projects and the premium reconstruction and redevelopment market.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's July 2026 housing statistics, ground-breakings nationwide totaled 138,383 units in the January–July period, up 11.1 percent from the same period last year. Regional ground-breakings rose 25.5 percent, while Seoul posted 19,507 units, a 44.4 percent year-on-year increase. Completions tell a different story: nationwide, 135,513 units were completed in the same period, down 41.4 percent from a year earlier. Apartment completions fell 44.2 percent to 119,682 units, with the Greater Seoul area down 38.7 percent and regional areas down 44.1 percent. Completed apartments in Seoul plunged 48.7 percent to 17,603 units.

Building-materials companies are looking to existing-home renovation to fill the void. Nationwide housing transactions reached 459,459 in the January–July period, up 8.8 percent year on year — a meaningful increase even as new apartment completions collapsed. When households move, they typically replace windows, flooring, wallpaper and kitchens, and it is precisely that consumer remodeling demand that the sector is now chasing.

LX Hausys has been the most aggressive. The company has made "discovering personal taste" the centerpiece of its autumn B2C interior push, and on Tuesday it unveiled a redesigned showroom at its LX Z:IN flagship store in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, featuring kitchen, living room, entryway, walk-in closet and bathroom spaces styled to individual preference. Customers can mix and match colors, materials, textures and finishes themselves. The company is also producing video content documenting the remodeling of older apartments to draw in demand during the autumn interior peak season.

LX Hausys has already seen the B2C expansion show up in its results. Second-quarter sales reached 939.7 billion won ($686 million), up 14.7 percent year on year, while operating profit surged 329 percent to 54.9 billion won. For the first half, cumulative sales rose 9.6 percent to 1.75 trillion won and operating profit jumped 407.5 percent to 100.8 billion won. Net profit for the period came in at 77.5 billion won, swinging to a profit. "We have determined that the remodeling business for existing homes is sufficiently viable and are focusing our efforts accordingly," a company official said.

KCC Glass is targeting consumers who want to renovate specific rooms rather than an entire home. In May, its interior brand Homeccci launched the "Homeccci Space Package," which lets customers select and renovate only the spaces they want — from among five options including the entryway, living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The product is designed to lower the barrier to partial renovation for consumers put off by the cost and time of a full remodel.

The company has also been expanding its premium lineup. Last month it rolled out 403 varieties of "Visenti" interior film, designed to bring a hotel or gallery atmosphere to residential spaces, as part of a push into the high-end housing market. It also relaunched "Sup Dodam," a premium PVC flooring line aimed at households with children or pets. Both products are positioned to capture demand from homeowners who want to refresh select finishing materials rather than undertake a full gut renovation.

Earnings have stabilized but remain fragile. KCC Glass posted second-quarter sales of around 577.1 billion won, up 12.5 percent year on year, and swung to an operating profit of 4.81 billion won from an operating loss of 35.43 billion won in the same period last year. However, a cumulative operating loss of about 5.3 billion won remained for the first half, and the second-quarter net loss came to 11.81 billion won.

Hyundai L&C is pursuing a strategy of capturing the premium end of the market. In June, the company began distributing an Italian solid-wood flooring brand and a German faucet brand domestically, combining them with existing premium products — including its Rehau window line and Cansstone engineered stone — to assemble a package of more than 20 building-material items. Its primary targets are reconstruction complexes in the Greater Seoul area and upscale residential facilities in the Gangnam area. The company's reasoning: even as overall new apartment supply shrinks, reconstruction and redevelopment sites and the premium options market can command relatively higher unit prices.

Hyundai L&C is also broadening its direct consumer touchpoints through a product lineup spanning windows, flooring, wallpaper and interior stone, while leveraging ties with group living affiliates including Hyundai Livart Furniture. This year the company has sharpened its focus on profitability by strengthening high-value-added products such as premium windows and interior stone and expanding into overseas markets.