According to the Ministry of Construction, to date, the whole country has only completed 21,000 social housing units, equivalent to about 16% of the plan for the whole year of 2024.
Recently, leaders of the Ministry of Construction have repeatedly said that realizing the goal of developing social housing still faces many difficulties and challenges.
One of the reasons for not completing the plan is because the implementation of preferential loan packages for this type of housing is still limited. Specifically, up to now, only 16 projects have been granted loans with a total credit commitment of 4,200 billion VND, outstanding debt of 1,727 billion.
Talking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam - General Director of G-Home - a company specializing in consulting on social housing development, assessed that the target of 130,000 social housing units was predicted by many experts to be difficult to achieve at the beginning of the year, this result is not too surprising. The whole country set a target of developing 1,000,000 social housing units by 2030, so it is impossible to live in the first year and then divide the distance equally.
Recently, 3 new Laws related to the real estate market have come into effect, of which the Housing Law 2023 has many new points to remove obstacles for the development of social housing. However, the policy cannot have an immediate impact but needs time to penetrate into real life.
“Social housing development enterprises are currently facing some difficulties, mainly in administrative and legal procedures. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a simpler and more concise investment and construction procedure for social housing projects. Enterprises also face difficulties in accessing loans with high interest rates and slow cash flow recovery. In addition, profits from social housing projects are limited, only about 7-8%, while investors have to bear many risks. For example, a series of additional costs if the project is prolonged or behind schedule.
To complete the project of 1 million social housing units, I recommend that localities proactively prepare clean land funds to speed up the implementation of social housing projects. In particular, it is necessary to simplify legal procedures and shorten the investment process for social housing projects. Build a stable and long-term support fund to support capital for investors and social housing buyers.
For the loan package to support social housing development to go the long way, banks also need to make a profit. The State can consider and study interest rate compensation for banks so that they can lend at more preferential interest rates for the development and purchase of social housing" - Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam proposed.
According to the General Director of G-Home, in the recent past, in addition to the VND 120,000 billion credit program, the Ministry of Construction's proposal to the Government to issue a resolution on implementing a VND 100,000 billion credit incentive package from the capital source of issuing government bonds so that buyers, renters of social housing and investors can get preferential loans until the end of 2030 is very welcome.
“I expect that in 2025, the growth rate of social housing will increase significantly, but there will still not be a rapid breakthrough, because the preparation, site clearance, and legal procedures still take a long time. It is expected that it will not be until around 2026-2027 that the growth rate of social housing can increase sharply,” Mr. Nguyen Hoang Nam assessed.
From 2021 to present, nationwide, 644 social housing projects have been implemented with a scale of 580,109 units. Of which, the number of completed projects: 96 projects with a scale of 57,652 units; the number of projects that have started construction: 133 projects with a scale of 110,217 units; the number of projects that have been approved for investment policy: 415 projects with a scale of 412,240 units.
