Vietnam's government has proposed changing social housing transfer rules in a draft amendment to the Housing Law. Under the proposal, five years after the buyer has fully paid for an apartment, the owner would no longer be able to sell it freely on the market. The buyer would have to be a person eligible for social housing.
Many residents support the idea. Thanh Phong, a Ho Chi Minh City resident, said limiting the pool of eligible buyers could discourage speculation and give people who genuinely need housing more opportunities to buy.
If the rule takes effect and authorities simplify the procedures for buying social housing, people may find it easier to purchase an apartment, Phong said. He also expected the added pressure to reduce housing prices.
Huyen Trang, an office worker in Ho Chi Minh City, also supports tighter controls on social housing transactions. She said the measure could help prevent people who genuinely need homes from being unable to buy one.
Nguyen Duy Thanh, chairman of Global Home and vice chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Apartment Management and Operations Association, said social housing should be resold only to people who meet the required conditions. The state supports these projects with land, credit, tax and investment procedures to help low-income people and workers obtain homes. That resource should therefore serve its intended group rather than become an investment asset.
Thanh said some social housing apartments rose sharply in price after their resale restriction expired, with some approaching the price of commercial housing. Limiting eligible buyers, he said, would direct the secondary market toward people who need homes to live in and can afford them, reducing the incentive to buy social housing as an investment.
The main difficulty is checking whether a buyer qualifies. The criteria cover income, housing and land ownership, residence and policy categories. Sellers do not have the authority to check all of the buyer's data, while developers cannot replace state agencies in verifying that information after an ownership certificate has been issued.
Thanh proposed displaying a buyer's eligibility status in VNeID and connecting it with population, housing, land, tax and social insurance data. Buyers could then confirm their status, while sellers, notaries and land registration agencies would use the same basis for checks. "Restricting eligible transferees is necessary, but it must be accompanied by a simple and transparent verification system," Thanh said.
Nguyen Anh Que, chairman of the board of G6 and a member of the Executive Committee of the Vietnam Association of Realtors, said the new rules could also make banks more cautious about lending to buyers of social housing on the secondary market.
If a borrower can no longer make payments, dealing with social housing used as collateral would be harder than dealing with commercial housing because the pool of eligible transferees is restricted. Banks could therefore ask for additional collateral or reduce the loan-to-value ratio.
Que said that if the new rules are introduced, the state should create a mechanism for cases in which buyers can no longer repay and provide suitable support to reduce risks for banks.
Another issue is who will confirm a buyer's eligibility. Once an ownership certificate has been issued, the developer no longer takes part in the resale transaction, so an agency will be needed to receive and assess the documents. Que proposed that commune-level people's committees receive applications and assess the buyer's category and documents, with the Department of Construction carrying out the final assessment.
Sources: Dân Trí
