What does the Ministry of Construction say about social housing prices being criticized as expensive and difficult for people to buy?

The Ministry of Construction said that it received a petition from voters of An Giang province sent to the National Assembly after the 8th session of the 15th National Assembly, sent by the Petition Committee, with petition content related to social housing.

According to voters, building social housing for low-income people is a major and humane policy of the Party and State. However, the current price of social housing is still high compared to the income of the majority of workers, especially low-income people, leading to limited access to purchase.

In addition, the rate of loans for social housing purchases from banks and credit institutions is still low, borrowing from the Social Policy Bank is still difficult due to irregular capital sources, complicated procedures, people who need to buy social housing have to borrow more, especially for the initial counterpart payment (30%), combined with quite high interest rates from commercial banks, leading to pressure to pay monthly loans and living expenses.

Voters' recommendations include the need for more effective and synchronous measures to solve the social housing problem that has been of interest to voters in many localities across the country, reflected on and recommended many times.

Responding to the issue of social housing prices, the Ministry of Construction said that, to facilitate the procedures for determining social housing prices, the 2023 Housing Law stipulates that the selling price is determined on the basis of calculating all costs to recover investment capital for housing construction, including: compensation, site clearance, resettlement support, investment costs for building technical infrastructure systems (if any) within the project, loan interest (if any), reasonable and valid costs of the enterprise (sales organization costs, business management costs, other reasonable costs), standard profits and excluding State incentives.

The lease purchase price is determined as the selling price and does not include the housing maintenance fee paid by the lessee according to the provisions of the Housing Law. The rental price is agreed upon by the investor and the lessee. In case the investor uses the winning bid price, it is not necessary to re-evaluate the selling price and the lease purchase price of social housing.

According to the Ministry of Construction, Article 85 stipulates incentives for social housing investors. Specifically, exemption from land use fees, land rent, tax incentives according to tax laws, investors are entitled to a 10% profit, are allocated land area or commercial floor area and do not have to account for it in social housing prices.

“These regulations contribute to encouraging and promoting investment and development of social housing and ensuring that social housing prices are at a reasonable level so that low-income workers and laborers can buy housing and stabilize their lives,” the Ministry of Construction emphasized.

More capital for social housing loans

Regarding capital sources to support social housing, the Ministry of Construction said that recently, the Government and the Prime Minister have directed ministries and branches to research capital sources to support and promote the development of social housing.

Specifically, the capital source of 120,000 billion VND according to Resolution No. 33 of 2023 of the Government is proactively balanced by commercial banks and the budget capital source through the Social Policy Bank.

To date, only 37/63 provincial People's Committees have sent documents or announced on the electronic information portal the list of projects participating in the program with 90 projects. The program's disbursement turnover reached VND 2,360 billion, of which more than VND 2,160 billion was for investors in 17 projects and VND 198 billion for home buyers in 15 projects.

In October 2024, the Government Office issued a document announcing the Prime Minister's conclusion at the conference summarizing 10 years of implementing Directive No. 40/2024 of the Secretariat on strengthening the Party's leadership over social policy credit.

In particular, the Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Construction to preside over and coordinate with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Finance, and the State Bank of Vietnam to complete by October 2024 the research, development, and implementation of a preferential credit package of about VND 30,000 billion for the Bank for Social Policies to provide loans for purchasing, hire-purchasing, constructing, renovating, and repairing houses to implement social policies. Of which, VND 15,000 billion is from the issuance of government bonds and VND 15,000 billion is from the local budget capital entrusted for lending.

Regarding this credit package, the Ministry of Construction informed that by the end of 2024, the ministry had reported to the Prime Minister.

Regarding the Project "Investing in the construction of at least 1 million social housing units for low-income earners and industrial park workers in the 2021-2030 period", the Ministry of Construction frankly acknowledged that although some important results have been achieved, the implementation of the project in the 2021-2025 period in some localities has not yet achieved the set targets (the total number of completed projects as of December 2024, and newly started construction projects, reached about 40% of the target for the 2021-2025 period).

Based on the above reality, the ministry said that in the coming time, it will continue to coordinate with ministries, branches and localities to focus on many specific tasks and solutions to implement social housing development.