Sharing with Lao Dong Newspaper reporter, Mr. Le Hoang Chau - Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) - said that the Draft Resolution on piloting specific mechanisms and policies for social housing development submitted to the National Assembly this time is an important step forward. However, Mr. Chau said that effective implementation requires amending and supplementing a number of points to ensure feasibility and fairness for beneficiaries and investors.
HoREA highly appreciates the first mention of the National Housing Fund as a national housing fund with the function of investing in creating housing funds for cadres, civil servants, public employees and workers for rent and purchase. However, to ensure consistency, it is necessary to add this group of subjects to Article 2 on the subjects of application of the Resolution. Currently, the group of workers accounts for a large proportion but has not been clearly mentioned in the applicable regulations.
According to HoREA, Ho Chi Minh City alone has more than 60,000 individuals operating long-term rental rooms, with more than 560,000 rooms serving 1.4 million people. If the Draft adds a regulation on recognizing the type of long-term rental rooms as a form of social housing invested by individuals, this group can access credit capital from the National Housing Fund, opening up a flexible development direction, taking advantage of resources among the people.
An issue that HoREA especially emphasized was the procedures for project acceptance. "Investors must be given the right to self-inspection and be responsible before the law. Specialty agencies should only intervene when requested by competent authorities, the HoREA representative emphasized.
According to the association, the current acceptance inspection process is still heavily formal, easily causing harassment, prolonging the time for social housing to be put into use and charging costs.
Regarding selling prices, HoREA proposed to amend current regulations that only allow investors to return the difference if the settlement price is lower than the contract price, but do not allow additional collection if the price is higher.
This is unreasonable. It needs to be fair. If the audit determines a higher price, investors should be allowed to collect an additional difference - unless they proactively do not collect to support the people" - said the Chairman of HoREA.
HoREA also proposed reducing the rent deposit from a maximum of 12 months (as prescribed by the Housing Law 2023) to a maximum of 3 months. This is to reduce financial pressure on workers and low-income people - groups that are in need of real support.
In particular, HoREA proposed allocating a medium-term budget to provide interest rate subsidies and refinancing for credit institutions participating in loans for buying and renting social housing. According to the association's calculation, if they can borrow at an interest rate of 4.8%/year for 25 years, buyers of social housing worth 2 billion VND only have to pay about 11.7 million VND/month - a level suitable for the average income of urban workers.
In the long term, HoREA also proposed to amend the regulations in Decree 100/2024 so that the Social Policy Bank can soon provide direct loans to social housing investors, instead of waiting until after 2030 as at present. "If capital does not be raised early, achieving the target of 1 million social housing apartments by 2030 will be very difficult to achieve" - said the association representative.
