Affordable housing programs enable low-income workers in southern Vietnam to own apartments
Affordable housing programs enable low-income workers in southern Vietnam to own apartments
Low-income workers in the southern Vietnamese provinces of Binh Duong and Dong Nai can now buy low-cost apartments thanks to social housing programs.
Each apartment is from 30 to 70 square meters in area and sold in installments for VND100-150 million (US$4,700-7,000).
Workers will pay some 20 percent of the total value of an apartment and the remaining is paid in installments every month.
The monthly installment to buy an apartment of the programs is equivalent to the sum they had to pay for renting rooms before, many workers said.
In Binh Duong, local authorities inaugurated 5,000 apartments in the housing program for low-income people on April 3 and already started the construction of 10,000 other similar apartments.
Dong Nai Province is also building thousands of such apartments for low-income earners.
Tran Van Vung, a worker of Saigonstec Company in Binh Duong, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that he is obliged to pay VND1.8 million ($84) a month during five years to own an apartment in the program.
He said he had rented a room for VND2 million ($93) a month.
Vung said he and his wife have a monthly income of over VND10 million ($466). It is enough for him to purchase by installments a 30 square meter apartment at VND132 million ($6,100) on the third floor of the A2e block of the Hoa Loi apartment building in Thu Dau Mot City.
He already paid VND20 million ($930) in advance.
Many companies such as Mai Thu in the industrial park VSIP 2 and Finecs VN in the industrial park VSIP 1 have worked out policies to help their workers own apartments to stabilize their lives.
The Mai Thu company put a down payment to book tens of apartments to distribute to their workers.
The social housing programs in the two provinces are mainly funded by a VND30 trillion ($1.4 billion) aid package from the Vietnamese government.
Nguyen Van Dat, general director of IDICO, which is the investor of the affordable housing project in Nhon Trach District in Dong Nai, said he has built apartments for 10,000 local workers.
It meets only ten percent of the demand there, he admitted, adding that IDICO will develop more projects.
The owners of those apartments are granted property ownership certificates and land joint ownership certificates.
Bigger plan
The People’s Committee of Binh Duong has plans to construct 64,700 apartments for low-income earners in 2015, but just a small part of that number has been completed due to a shortage of investment and land banks.
Bui Van Chien, deputy general director of Becamex IDC, which is the investor of the social housing program in Binh Duong, said only ten percent of the apartment owners can get access to soft loans from the VND30 trillion package of the central government.
Even without the lending, many workers target to buy apartments of the program thanks to its lower prices than what is often offered in the market.
Normally, a buyer has to have around VND500 million ($23,300) for a down payment before thinking of buying an apartment in busy residential areas in Vietnam now.
According to the Ministry of Construction, Vietnam currently has 2.2 million workers in industrial parks but only 20 percent of them have private homes.
