South Korea said Monday it will consider extending a scheme to cap the presale prices of privately built apartments in the case of instability in real estate markets.

Vice Finance Minister Kim Yong-beom made comments in a meeting with officials at a building in western Seoul.

The comments came more than a week after the government announced a plan to introduce a "presale price cap system" for new apartments built by private builders to help stabilize escalating home prices.

The system is widely seen as the strongest measure ever taken by the government to clamp down on housing prices.

The government has said it will initially apply the price cap system to four affluent Gangnam areas in southern Seoul and four districts in northern Seoul.

Twenty-two localities of the four Gangnam districts and five in the four non-Gangnam districts will be subject to the price cap system, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

Later this month, the government will announce its mid-term probe into a series of acts that may cause disturbances in real estate markets, Kim said. 

Housing prices have been on the rise in recent years, spurring policymakers to roll out a series of measures, including tightened home-backed loan regulations and hefty taxation, to cool down home prices. (Yonhap)