Tighten speculation, limit land abandonment
At the press conference at the end of the Extraordinary Session of the 16th National Assembly held on the afternoon of August 24, National Assembly Deputy Pham Thi Hong Yen, a full-time member of the National Assembly's Economic and Finance Committee, clarified the contents related to policy orientations on land, real estate and housing expected to be included in the National Assembly's schedule at the upcoming 2nd session. Accordingly, three laws on land, housing and real estate business are oriented to be amended in the direction of removing bottlenecks and unlocking resources. The database system on land, housing and real estate is built to increase fairness, publicity, transparency and harmony of interests between the State, land users and investors.
One of the notable orientations in the proposal to amend the 2024 Land Law is to use financial tools more strongly to limit speculation, hoarding and abandonment of land.
Mr. Le Dinh Chung - General Director of SGO Homes, Vice Chairman of the VARS Real Estate Market Evaluation Research Council - said that if applied in practice, this policy can contribute to eliminating speculators - the force pushing real estate prices up, while limiting speculative investment behavior. Thereby, the market will be more balanced, creating conditions for people with real housing needs to access real estate at more appropriate prices, and helping to make market price determination more accurate.
According to Mr. Chung, in the past time, the participation of many speculative groups, especially in land auction activities, has pushed up land prices, thereby affecting the determination of land prices by the State.
Therefore, taxing abandoned land will contribute to reorienting land use needs. Instead of buying land and leaving it abandoned, owners will have to find ways to exploit the value of real estate, such as building houses for rent or putting them into business. However, for policies to be effective, there need to be clear criteria to determine what is abandoned land, avoiding taxing the wrong subjects. Regarding short-term impacts, he said that market sentiment will certainly stagnate when investors assess the impact of policies. However, in the long term, cash flow will prioritize more types serving real housing needs, helping the real estate market develop healthier and more transparently.
Promoting digital transformation in real estate management
The draft revised Real Estate Business Law has supplemented regulations on electronic identification codes for real estate products and reduced many administrative procedures.
Director of the Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management Hoang Anh Tuan said that the spirit of administrative procedure reform is expressed throughout the draft law, when it is expected to cut many current administrative procedures; and at the same time simplify many investment and business conditions, abolish the procedure of notifying before selling or leasing-purchasing the floor area formed in the future, and remove the requirement that organizations and individuals doing real estate brokerage, consulting and management services must establish businesses.
Many conditions for exchanges and land use right transfer activities have also been reviewed and standardized towards transparency, convenience and ease of implementation.
A breakthrough new content is the addition of regulations on digital transformation in real estate market management. Accordingly, each real estate will be granted a unique electronic identification code on the information system and national housing database; organizations and individuals participating in real estate business must use electronic identification accounts to conduct transactions and update data according to the principle of "right, sufficient, clean, living".
This is expected to create a strong shift in market transparency, while improving the efficiency of management, forecasting and regulation of state agencies.
