The Housing Law and Law on Real Estate Business of Vietnam still have many deficiencies that need amendments and supplements to create favourable conditions for those doing business in this field.
This is the recommendation of most participants in a conference to review implementation of the two laws, recently organised by the Ministry of Construction.
The Ministry of Construction assessed that after 8 years of implementing the Housing Law and 7 years of implementing the Real Estate Business Law, the two laws currently show many limitations and deficiencies.
Particularly, the two laws have not successfully encouraged people to develop housing, especially social housing, low priced housing, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand.
More seriously, the prices of houses are beyond the incomes of most people.
According to Mr Nguyen Duc Tuan, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Construction Department, overlaps and deficiencies in the laws on construction and real estate should be overcome. For example, while Real Estate Business Law regulates that “project owner can mobilise capital after completing infrastructure of the project”, the Housing Law says in contrast: “project owner can mobilise capital only after completing basement”; the regulations on mobilising capital from foreign investors are not clear, which is behind the fact that even foreign projects attract mostly domestic capital.
Mr Le Khac Hiep, Vice Chairman of Vingroup, said regulations on partial project alienation should be made clear, because in fact many enterprises do not want to invest from the beginning, they just want to buy unfinished projects to construct their offices or headquarters; however, Vietnamese laws, unlike in many countries, still do not allow this.
Dr Dang Kim Chung from the Central Institution for Economic Management (CIEM) said that several articles of the two laws are too rigid, eliminating some types of real estate products. Meanwhile, real estate investment funding is not clearly regulated in the Real Estate Business Law, but in “unwritten law”.
Mr Nguyen Ngoc Thanh, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Real Estate Association, said that the two laws should be basically changed apart from amending or supplementing them, because their implementation has led to problems in housing and land policies.
Sharing the same opinion, Dr Pham Sy Liem, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Federation for Civil Engineering Association, straightforwardly proposed “the two laws have completed their visions, so now it is time for a new law that is closer to reality”. According to him, if old regulations are still maintained, it is difficult to handle the “unbelievably high real estate prices” currently.
On behalf of the Ministry of Construction, Minister Trinh Dinh Dung informed that the authority will propose amendment and supplements of many important regulations, offering many favourable conditions for project owners and people having housing difficulties.
“We cannot mechanically apply regulations of other countries, but it is also difficult to succeed if we do not care about them at all. For example, foreigners should be permitted to buy houses, land and apartments, which will bring many benefits while they cannot be taken elsewhere”.
Mr Nguyen Manh Ha, Director of the Housing and Real Estate Market Management Department (Ministry of Construction) said that it will propose amendments and supplements to many important policies such as deregulating certificates of rights on owning houses, expanding foreign groups allowed to buy houses, and allowing mortgage futures of houses.
As for condominiums, the Ministry planned to separate condominium management contents into a chapter; allowing foreign investors to rent houses and on-rent; and allowing foreign investors not doing real estate business to buy and possess offices.
According to Mr Nguyen Tran Nam, Deputy Minister of Construction, amendments and supplements to the two laws will be submitted to the National Assembly at the beginning of next year, however, because of amendments to many important regulations, the authority proposed delaying the time scheme to 2015.
As for expanding the rights of overseas Vietnamese and foreigners to buy houses, Mr Nam informed that, despite more open regulations, they are still required to live more than 3 months in Vietnam to have the right to buy houses.
Vietnamese
