In February 2024, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee issued Decision 26 regulating the management and use of apartment buildings. Accordingly, the rental of apartments in apartment buildings must ensure the right purpose of use for living, absolutely do not use apartments for short-term accommodation purposes, by day, hour...
This regulation is supported by many residents living in apartment projects but has also encountered many mixed opinions from apartment owners who are operating a rental model. According to statistics from the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), banning the Airbnb accommodation model also leads to many economic consequences for the city.
Preliminary statistics from this Association show that Ho Chi Minh City has about 8,740 short-term rental apartments through Airbnb in 24 buildings, if each apartment is worth about 5 billion VND, the total investment value is up to 43,700 billion VND. With a loan rate of 70% and an interest rate of 9%/year, the total outstanding loan balance is about VND 30,590 billion, and the annual interest cost is nearly VND 2,753 billion.
Therefore, the ban on short-term apartment rental has caused many apartment owners to face difficulties due to having to compensate for contracts, losing short-term customers, losing income, and affecting their ability to repay debts. Many people are forced to reduce rental prices or switch to long-term leasing, but with a scale of nearly 9,000 apartments, finding long-term customers is very difficult.
Speaking to Lao Dong newspaper reporters, Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, said that the regulation prohibiting "use of apartments for purposes other than housing" is not a new point in the Housing Law 2023. In fact, this regulation has been stated in the 2014 Housing Law. However, during nearly 10 years of implementation, this regulation has not caused difficulties for apartment owners to rent short-term via platforms such as Airbnb.
It is noteworthy that only after the 2023 Housing Law was issued and this regulation was repeated at Point c, Clause 8, Article 3, did the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee issue Decision No. 26/2025/QD-UBND, officially banning short-term rental activities in apartments.
Mr. Chau said that the city has an incorrect understanding of this regulation in the Housing Law 2023. The law has stipulated that the owner of the apartment has the right to rent its apartment in the long -term form (monthly, yearly) or short -term (day, weekly, Airbnb ...). The 2013 Law on accommodation also affirmed that "Citizens stayed for a certain time at the location". Therefore, the interpretation of the city is that only long -term rental apartments are for the purpose of staying (staying), while short -term rent is not in the scope to stay (stay) is not accurate.
According to Mr. Chau, Ho Chi Minh City's ban while other localities do not ban it can reduce the city's attraction to tourists, affecting the goal of developing tourism in the spearhead economic sector.
Faced with the above situation, HoREA recommends that Ho Chi Minh City should have a unified understanding of the concept of "using apartments for living" including long-term and short-term leasing, as long as the tenant uses it for living, without changing the function such as office, restaurant... Short-term leasing should not be banned if this activity still serves residential purposes (even temporarily).
At the same time, it recommended that the National Assembly Standing Committee clearly explain the concepts of "use for living" and "not for living" in the Housing Law, to help localities apply unifiedly, avoid misunderstandings and unnecessarily affecting life, economy and tourism.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has also assigned the Department of Construction to coordinate with relevant units based on legal regulations and the Resolution on specific mechanisms for city development to assess the actual situation of managing short-term accommodation models in apartments. How can this model both ensure security for people living there, and at the same time study the mechanism for economic and tourism development of the city?
