Lawyer Quach Thanh Luc - Director of Phap Tri Law Company, Hanoi Bar Association said that the current process of issuing land use right certificates has been designed in the direction of minimizing the work of functional agencies.
Accordingly, when specialized officials receive people's dossiers through the one-stop-shop department, basic tasks will be performed including: Checking cadastral maps, surveys; if not available, request functional units to carry out surveys within 5 days.
Next, professional staff check the current status, determine whether there are constructions on the land or not; assess whether the land use process is stable, whether there are disputes or not, and determine the origin of land use.
Depending on each case of certificate issuance, functional agencies will determine whether the land plot is suitable for planning or not? On that basis, combined with other legal factors such as determining the person to be granted the certificate, the land user, the legality of the transfer of land use rights..., specialized agencies will have appropriate assessments and handling.
According to the procedure, specialized officials prepare reports, evaluate and list them at the commune-level People's Committee. If no disputes arise, after the 15-day listing period ends, the dossier is transferred to the tax authority for determination and notification of financial obligations.
After people complete their financial obligations, the dossier is continued to be processed to carry out the issuance of certificates.
Lawyer Quach Thanh Luc said that this is a process designed in Decree 151/2025 with the expectation of a resolution time of about 17 days and an additional 3 days to issue a certificate. However, in reality, the implementation process is much more difficult.
According to the lawyer, through the process of studying legal regulations and directly participating in resolving many cases of certificate issuance through the periods of the 2003 Land Law, 2013 and 2024, Lawyer Quach Thanh Luc realized that the actual workload that professional staff have to perform is many times greater, and it is very difficult to solve it in 21 days.
To quickly resolve the issue of red books for people, according to lawyer Quach Thanh Luc, immediately upon receiving the dossier, professional staff need to clearly identify the location of the land plot, plot number, and map sheet.
After that, officials must check the archived records or data on the system to determine the cadastral map through periods recording land plots; information in the inventory book, cadastral book; whether there is a cadastral map or not and whether the map data between periods is incorrect or not.
Next, professional staff must check the current status and perform measurements and drawings. Map data through each period needs to be compared and "overlapped" to determine the origin of each part of the area: which part has encroachment and occupation origin; which part is land left by ancestors; which part has transfer papers...
Based on the origin and collected data, officials can determine each case, each area belonging to the case of issuing certificates according to Article 137, Article 138, Article 139 or Article 140 of the Land Law.
According to the lawyer, if it is not implemented correctly from the beginning, the dossier may have gone through many steps, but close to the time of issuing the certificate, it is discovered that the land plot does not belong to the case of land with papers as initially identified, but may be encroached upon, occupied or land allocated not under proper authority.
Therefore, according to lawyer Luc, the first thing to do is to find out the origin, based on the drawing and measurement results to clearly determine each location, each part of the area. Then continue to check the current status, determine the time of land use, dispute status and stable land use process.
Regarding the basis for determining the stable land use process, lawyer Luc said that if the land user has documents in the case specified in Article 137 of the Land Law, they can be based on these documents.
In case there are no papers under Article 137, documents such as penalty decisions, receipts, electricity and water papers or cadastral records established after 1980 can be considered. In which, electricity and water receipts can also be a basis for consideration.
