Deputy Prime Minister meets with real estate businesses about new law: Many shortcomings need to be resolved

According to Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), the conference is very important to review and evaluate the results achieved over the past year, point out the shortcomings, problems, limitations and causes; agree on solutions to improve the efficiency of the Working Group's operations to remove difficulties and obstacles in implementing real estate projects for localities and enterprises, especially in the context after the new laws have just been issued.

HoREA believes that currently the real estate market still has many shortcomings and problems that need to be overcome.

For example, Clause 1, Clause 4, Article 23 of the 2014 Housing Law and Point b, Clause 1, Clause 6, Article 127 of the 2024 Land Law stipulate that enterprises are only allowed to "agree on receiving the right to use residential land", or "have the right to use residential land" or "have the right to use residential land and other land" to carry out commercial housing projects.

"The solution is to develop a draft "Pilot Project" to submit to competent authorities for submission to the National Assembly for consideration and issuance of a Resolution allowing the pilot implementation of commercial housing projects through agreements on receiving land use rights, or having other land use rights according to the provisions of law", Mr. Chau stated his opinion.

The Chairman of HoREA cited that Ho Chi Minh City has about 20 commercial housing projects in which investors have the right to use "land other than residential land" (accounting for about 15% of the total number of commercial housing projects in the area), so they are not recognized as investors.

Typically, Real Estate Company V bought the collateral for the bad debt at Commercial Bank Q, which was a factory land in Binh Chanh district with an area of ​​3,219 m2, in an area planned for high-rise development as approved by the competent state agency. However, the "ironic" thing is that Company V has no need to invest in industrial production and cannot invest in industrial production because it is not in accordance with the (new) approved planning, but Company V is also not recognized as the investor of the high-rise commercial housing project, because Company V has the right to use "land other than residential land" according to the current land use status.

In addition, there are also many shortcomings and difficulties in real estate and housing projects due to some regulations of sub-law documents.

For example, regarding the procedure of "approving investment policy at the same time as approving investors" as stipulated in Point c, Clause 7, Article 31 of Decree 31/2021/ND-CP; the inadequacy of "transitional handling" regarding the obligation of the investor of a commercial housing project to reserve a part of the land fund (20% land fund) of the project to develop social housing...

Previously, according to a report from the Ministry of Construction, in 2023, the Prime Minister's Working Group received 142 documents reporting difficulties, problems, and recommendations from localities, businesses, associations, and people related to 191 real estate projects.

Currently, although there have been many positive changes in the resolution of difficulties in the implementation of real estate projects, there are still many limitations. For example, some localities have not yet established a task force to resolve difficulties according to regulations; the resolution of difficulties mainly stops at sending documents to relevant departments and branches for consideration and has not had specific results even though the task force has repeatedly sent documents to urge.

Besides, organizations and law enforcement officers have a fear of making mistakes, fear of responsibility, fear of legal risks, leading to slow resolution, not daring to propose, not daring to decide.

Has not reviewed and compiled a list of housing and real estate projects in the area to specifically assess the causes and reasons why projects have not been implemented or are slow to be implemented.

Not yet focused on establishing and approving planning, land use plans, construction plans, programs, and 5-year and annual housing development plans to serve as a basis for approving investment policies for housing development projects.

Not yet focused on promoting land use rights auctions; bidding for projects using land...

Lack of attention to administrative procedure reform leads to prolongation or delay in handling procedures for implementing real estate projects in the area.