Amid soaring housing prices, a controversial price ceiling system for privately built apartments will be reintroduced on Wednesday.

The "presale price cap" system will be applied to a total of 322 areas in 18 districts in Seoul and three cities in Gyeonggi Province. The price cap is expected to reduce apartment prices in the designated areas by five to ten percent. 

The disputed system involves capping presale prices of newly-built apartments below the price ceiling based on the actual price paid by contractors for land purchases, basic construction costs and other necessary expenses. 

First introduced by the Roh Moo-hyun administration in 2007 to clamp down on soaring housing prices, the system was virtually scrapped in 2015 by the Park Geun-hye government to boost the economy.

The government had planned to implement the revived system on April 29 after a six-month grace period, but postponed it for three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.