Overseas Vietnamese can buy houses in the country more easily

The revised Land Law has many new points, focusing on 5 groups of issues. Among them, there are groups of regulations to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of land users such as expanding land use rights to Vietnamese citizens, including those residing abroad.

In Article 4, the regulations on land users are supplemented with a group of Vietnamese origin residing abroad but without Vietnamese nationality (also known as overseas Vietnamese). This group will enjoy full rights to land and housing like domestic citizens and overseas Vietnamese (people who still have Vietnamese nationality).

In the new law, Article 28 also specifically stipulates that overseas Vietnamese who are allowed to enter Vietnam are allowed to buy or rent houses attached to land use rights, receive land use rights in housing development projects; inherit land use rights and other types of land on the same plot of land with a house (current law does not have these provisions).

Mr. Nguyen Van Hau, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, assessed that the provisions in the new Land Law, along with the Housing and Real Estate Business Law, which will take effect from 2025, create more favorable conditions for overseas Vietnamese to invest and buy houses in Vietnam.

He explained that under current law, overseas Vietnamese are allowed to buy houses in Vietnam. However, lawyer Hau said that the difficulty is that the complicated procedures and paperwork to prove Vietnamese origin have discouraged overseas Vietnamese.

Therefore, many overseas Vietnamese have chosen to have their relatives stand in their names when buying real estate in the country. This has also led to disputes and lawsuits in some cases when there are problems or incidents in the family. Along with that, many investors are also confused when they do not know whether their projects are allowed to be sold to overseas Vietnamese or not, because this requires approval from management agencies.

Mr. Hau said that clear regulations in the 2024 Land Law will be a premise for the Government to guide judicial agencies to create conditions for people to prove their Vietnamese origin more simply.

Some analysts also assessed that the new regulation could attract more remittances into Vietnam's real estate market in the context of many difficulties in the market. At a conference on home buying for foreigners and overseas Vietnamese in 2023, Mr. Peter Hong, Permanent Vice President of the Association of Overseas Vietnamese Entrepreneurs, said that many overseas Vietnamese want to return home to settle down and invest but do not know how to own real estate.

According to him, there are about 5.5 million Vietnamese people living abroad and more than 1 million F2, F3 generations whose fathers, mothers or grandparents are Vietnamese. Of these, more than 20% are at retirement age, most of whom want to return to their homeland to live, invest, and stay close to their roots in their later years. A survey by the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Club (HREC) showed that about 3 million overseas Vietnamese have a need to own real estate when returning to Vietnam to live, of which the majority choose Ho Chi Minh City.

According to the latest data from the State Bank of Ho Chi Minh City, the amount of remittances flowing into the city last year hit a record high of 9.46 billion USD, up 43% compared to 2022 and accounting for more than half of the total remittances nationwide. Compared to the total foreign direct investment (FDI) in the city in 2023, the amount of remittances was 2.7 times higher and equal to about 14% of the gross regional domestic product (GRDP).