Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) has just issued a document commenting on the draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Decrees in the field of housing and real estate business.
HoREA expressed its welcome that the Ministry of Construction has received comments to draft a Decree amending and supplementing a number of regulations in the field of housing and real estate business. Notably, Clause 2, Article 4 of the draft Decree amending and supplementing Article 30 of Decree 100/2024/ND-CP has raised the income criteria for buying and renting social housing to VND20 million/person, VND40 million/husband and VND30 million for single individuals raising children under the age of majority. Income is determined according to the salary table, public service table confirmed by the agency, unit, or enterprise, or for freelance workers, it is confirmed by the police agency at the commune level where they are permanent or temporarily residing.
HoREA proposes to add the "under-age dependent" category to the case of single individuals raising children under the age of majority with an income of VND 30 million/month, to ensure consistency with the provisions on "dependents" in Resolution 954/2020/UBTVQH14 of the National Assembly Standing Committee on family deduction when calculating personal income tax.
In addition, the Association agrees with Clause 4, Article 4 of the draft Decree amending and supplementing Clause 4, Article 48 of Decree 100/2024/ND-CP, stipulating: " phage for loans for buying and renting social housing as prescribed by the Prime Minister in each period".
According to HoREA, if approved, this regulation will overcome the shortcomings of Clause 4, Article 48 of current Decree 100/2024/ND-CP, when it stipulates that buyers and renters of social housing are subject to lending interest rates equal to lending interest rates for poor households. In fact, the Bank for Social Policies is applying an interest rate of 6.6%/year for buyers and renters of social housing, which is considered too high. At the same time, investors of social housing projects must borrow at an interest rate equal to 120% of the lending interest rate of buyers and renters of social housing, equivalent to 7.92%/year.
Regarding transfer regulations, HoREA proposed adding Clause 5 to Article 42 of Decree 100/2024/ND-CP. Accordingly, buyers of individual social housing after 5 years are allowed to resell and only have to pay 20% (or 30%) of the land use fee. Currently, the regulation requires paying 50% of land use fees, while the adjusted land price list in many localities has increased sharply compared to the previous period, such as in Ho Chi Minh City with an increase of 2.36 times to nearly 39 times.
HoREA believes that the 50% fee is too high and not suitable for reality, because individual social housing units are located within the local residential land limit. Therefore, it is recommended to only apply a 20% fee to synchronize with the draft Resolution of the Government on removing difficulties in calculating land use fees when converting the purpose from agricultural land to residential land.
In the long term, the Association proposed that the Ministry of Construction submit to the Government for consideration the amendment of the Housing Law 2023 and Point b, Clause 1, Article 157 of the 2024 Land Law, in the direction that buyers of individual social housing after 5 years of reselling will not have to pay land use fees, to ensure that beneficiaries of social housing policies are exempted once in their life.
