Difficulty registering for social housing purchase quotas
CT3 Kim Chung social housing project (Tien Loc commune, Hanoi) officially received documents for buying, renting and leasing social housing from November 17. For two consecutive days, thousands of people have lined up to submit documents at the project. Many people have even been present at the reception point since the previous evening, waiting all night to reserve their seats, hoping to submit their applications early the next day.
Although she had prepared the documents since the afternoon of November 17, due to the large number of submitters, Ms. Le Thi Phuong was informed to move to the next day before her turn to submit.
"My family had to take two people to take turns waiting. If there is only one person, just a little bit of leaving the goods will immediately lose their position. I really hope to be able to submit my application soon tomorrow morning" - Ms. Phuong shared.
Obviously, buying social housing for many people still faces many difficulties. In early November 2025, reporters from Lao Dong Newspaper were present at many other social housing projects in Hanoi. In addition to the atmosphere of construction practice to keep the project on schedule, the common point is that around the project, "brokers" (those who introduce people who are able to keep seats, guide documents and even "probable" to buy if people in need are willing to pay) are always present in these projects.
Mr. Le Quang Huy - Deputy General Director of BIC Vietnam Joint Stock Company, investor of Him Lam Thuong Thanh social housing project (Rice City Long Chau) - said that to avoid being scammed, people buying social housing need to access information from official sources. Absolutely do not trust any "broker" in guiding the completion of the dossier.
The scammers will often give reasons such as: "This time the authorities are monitoring very closely", "less so the investor has to withdraw to handle other high-level cases"... At the same time, they will say: "I have transferred 300 million, I will return it, but need to deduct the consultation fee", usually 20 million or even 50 million. "This is how they make a profit," Mr. Huy exposed the tricks of social housing brokers.
Open policy, expected to relieve supply bottlenecks
According to the Ministry of Construction, by the end of October, the whole country had 696 social housing projects under implementation, with a scale of nearly 640,000 apartments. This figure is boosted by a series of new policies, helping businesses boldly restart projects and expand investment scale.
According to calculations, if more investors are attracted in the next 3 years, the social housing fund can increase by one and a half, or even double per year - a remarkable expectation.
However, to make people truly have access to housing at a suitable price, it is necessary to strengthen control of difference sales, selling prices and simplify the approval process.
Regarding solutions to remove difficulties for the social housing segment, Dr. Tran Xuan Luong - Deputy Director of the Vietnam Institute for Real Estate Market Research and Evaluation - emphasized that it is necessary to synchronously remove existing bottlenecks.
First of all, each locality should establish a specialized department according to the one-stop mechanism, helping people to be able to carry out all procedures for purchasing social housing in one location. This department also needs to support investors in the process of completing administrative procedures.
In addition, the State needs to prepare clean land funds and publicly announce them so that businesses can easily access and implement projects, avoiding congestion due to prolonged legal problems. In addition, it is necessary to introduce banks participating in preferential loan programs in advance, and at the same time build a list of standard construction material suppliers specifically for the social housing segment.
"It is necessary to create a closed support chain from administrative procedures, land funds, loans to materials to avoid the situation where land has a shortage of capital, capital has procedures, or if there are sufficient conditions, cannot find a construction contractor. If we cannot do that, we will continue to operate illegally and cannot put social housing policies into practice" - Dr. Tran Xuan Luong commented.
