Housing operations must be effective

Housing operations must be effective

In 2025, the real estate market is expected to maintain a broadly stable growth trajectory. However, a number of persistent shortcomings and constraints remain and need to be addressed in order to ensure sustainable and effective development in the years ahead.

In practice, several projects continue to face legal impediments, resulting in delayed implementation or prolonged suspension. Given the substantial resources already committed, these delays lead to waste of land and capital, increase costs and difficulties for investors, and ultimately push up selling prices.

Nguyen Van Sinh, deputy Minister of Construction

In many localities, housing development programmes and approved plans are not being closely followed. Management of product structure and land reserves for housing development remains insufficiently proactive, while inadequate attention has been paid to social housing and affordable commercial housing that match the purchasing power of middle- and low-income groups.

As a result, supply is still concentrated in the high-end and mid-range segments, with a clear shortage of homes priced within the reach of the majority of the population, particularly housing for industrial park workers, social housing and housing for low-income earners. Real estate prices therefore remain high relative to average incomes, and often exceed what most households can afford.

In addition, rising cost components such as land-use fees, construction material prices and other legitimate expenses have further contributed to upward pressure on property prices.

The development of social housing also faces notable limitations. In some localities, insufficient priority has been given to social housing development, with local budgets not adequately allocated for compensation, support, and resettlement in technical infrastructure to create clean land reserves for project implementation.

Although many provinces and cities have set aside sizeable land areas for social housing, the quality of these land reserves is often inadequate. Social housing plots are frequently located far from urban centres, lack adequate technical and social infrastructure connections, and are therefore not immediately usable, while slow site clearance has continued to affect timelines.

In some projects, social housing selling prices remain relatively high, and there have been instances of illegal brokerage activities and misleading advertising of so-called “privileged allocations”, undermining the humanitarian and inclusive objectives of the policy.

Against this backdrop, it is necessary to continue proposing and implementing solutions that better harness existing potential and steer the real estate market towards safer, healthier, more sustainable and more dynamic development in the period ahead.

For ministries and central agencies, priorities include continued review and improvement of the legal and policy framework governing housing and real estate to ensure coherence, consistency, feasibility and effectiveness. This should go hand in hand with the simplification and reduction of administrative procedures, stronger decentralisation and delegation of authority, and greater application of digital transformation to address practical shortcomings and inconsistencies.

Policies and mechanisms should also be studied to encourage development of commercial housing at affordable prices, as well as rental and rent-to-own housing models aligned with household affordability.

Housing development should be driven in line with approved planning, programmes. and plans that reflect real demand in the new phase of development, avoiding scattered and wasteful investment, while being closely integrated with urban development, renovation and upgrading, and ensuring synchronised technical and social infrastructure.

Social housing needs to be accelerated in accordance with the government’s resolutions on targets for the 2026-2030 period, with the aim of fulfilling the scheme to invest in and build at least one million social housing units for low-income groups and industrial park workers during 2021–2030. The prompt establishment of a National Housing Fund is required to receive capital, invest, create housing stock, manage operations and provide rental housing.

At the same time, obstacles facing real estate and housing projects nationwide should be reviewed and resolved to unlock investment resources, support economic growth, and contribute to political stability and social order. Consideration should be given to establishing a state-run real estate and land-use rights transaction centre.

Housing and real estate market information systems and databases also need to be operated more effectively and connected with land, construction, planning, tax and finance databases, ensuring that data are accurate, complete, clean, up to date and seamlessly linked from central to local levels.

Market developments should be closely monitored on a regular basis, with timely and coordinated measures adopted to regulate and control the market to ensure safe, sound and sustainable growth. Inspection and supervision activities must be strengthened to promptly rectify, prevent and strictly handle violations in real estate business operations, trading floor services and brokerage activities, as well as to oversee and control credit provision and corporate bond issuance in the real estate sector.

Finally, efforts should continue to urge local authorities and enterprises to accelerate investment in social housing construction, ensure social housing development targets for 2026 and subsequent years are met, and speed up disbursement of the VND145 trillion ($5.8 billion) credit programme for social housing and worker housing, with particular emphasis on expanding access for young people under the age of 35.

With strong political determination, the gradual improvement of institutional frameworks, and the innovative drive of the business community, I am confident that Vietnam’s real estate market will break through and enter a new growth cycle.

VIR