In the context of social housing supply not meeting expectations, many investors in Ho Chi Minh City have begun to shift to developing social housing projects for rent to meet the housing needs of low-income people in urban areas.
Last October, Ho Chi Minh City had more than 240 social housing units for rent of Nam Long Group put on the market with an expected rental price of more than VND101,000/m2.According to the above rental price, a standard apartment with an area of 50 m2 has a rental price of about VND5 million per month.The project's apartment blocks are mainly apartments with an area of 40-75 m2, with rental prices from VND4-7.6 million/month, excluding management fees, parking fees, and other utility services.Last December, the investor also offered for rent more than 200 apartments in this block with the same rental price as above.
Previously, investor Le Thanh also launched the Le Thanh Tan Kien social housing project for rent (Binh Chanh district) with a rental period of 49 years (no pink book).The apartment area is from 42-46 m2 including two bedrooms, rental price from 920 million VND to 1 billion VND/apartment.
This can be considered a new direction in improving the supply of low-cost housing for workers.However, the supply is still very small compared to reality.Real estate businesses are almost not interested in building rental houses, while most of the supply of boarding houses and rental houses falls on self-made people.
The current reason is that there is a lack of solutions to increase competitiveness for businesses when investing in this segment such as capital support with low interest rates, tax support, easier access to land funds, creating procedural conditions, reducing barriers...
Speaking at a recent seminar on solutions to increase social housing supply, Mr. Le Huu Nghia - Director of Le Thanh Construction and Trading Company Limited - said that the most important solution to promote increased social housing supply in both the sale and rental segments is to remove legal obstacles.
According to Mr. Nghia, the legal progress of a project lasting 5 years will cause businesses to increase costs a lot, the longer it takes, the more losses the business will have.Therefore, the process of building social housing projects needs to be different from commercial housing.
Regarding capital, Mr. Nghia proposed to balance 50-50 for buyers and investors so that both project developers and buyers can access capital support packages.Because if there are no special policies on capital and interest rates for businesses, even when the revised law comes into effect, few businesses will be interested in investing in social housing projects for rent.
Mr. Nghia further analyzed that to build 1,000 houses for rent, businesses need 500 billion VND."If the rental price is 3.5 million VND/month, the whole year's revenue will not be able to cover the interest rate that businesses borrow to invest," Mr. Nghia said.In reality, although building social housing, this enterprise is borrowing at an interest rate of 13%, which is a major barrier to building social housing for rent.
Mr. Le Hoang Chau - Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) - also proposed that enterprises investing in building social housing for rent only will be subject to a corporate income tax rate of 6%.Enterprises investing in renovating and rebuilding apartment buildings will be subject to a tax rate of 10%.This is a tax rate 70% lower than the general regulation and is intended to encourage enterprises to participate in the social housing rental sector, contributing to solving the housing problem for people.
