On September 17, information from the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee said that it had received applications for auction of resettlement apartments in the Thu Thiem New Urban Area from a number of real estate enterprises. In particular, Son Kim Real Estate Joint Stock Company submitted a bid to participate in the auction of 3,790 apartments in lots R1, R2, R3, R4, R5 in Thu Thiem New Urban Area in An Phu Ward. Similarly, the Joint Venture of Sunshine Group Joint Stock Company and Dia Investment Joint Stock Company also proposed to participate in the auction of the above apartment lots.
It is known that these apartments are located in a 38.4-hectare area, part of the 12,500 apartments program serving the resettlement of the Thu Thiem New Urban Area. The project has been completed since 2015 because most of the people affected by the Thu Thiem New Urban Area project have received self-resettlement money, so only a few blocks have residents, and a few have been converted to commercial housing since the construction began, such as the New City area of Thuan Viet Company, with 1,229 apartments.
The house was completed but no one lived there, so in 2017, for the first time the city auctioned 3,790 Thu Thiem resettlement apartments, with a starting price of VND 8,800 billion, but there were no participants.
In 2018, the city continued to auction for the second time and now the starting price was raised to VND 9,100 billion. Like last time, this time no one bought it.
By mid-2021, the third auction continued and the price increased to VND9,900 billion. As a result, no one bought it.
For the fourth time in 2023, the auction price was kept unchanged but was also unsuccessful.
The 5th auction will take place this year.
It is worth mentioning that the apartments are located on the golden land of Thu Thiem. At this time, projects implemented in the area have the lowest selling price per square meter of 150 million VND. Border projects also have prices above and below 100 million VND/m2. That is, each 2-bedroom apartment, area of about 70 m2, the lowest price is also up to 7 - 10 billion VND. While the average of each apartment being auctioned is only about 2.6 billion VND.
Experts assess that the consecutive failures of previous auctions show that the organization method is not suitable. There is also a proposal to reduce the auction scale, instead of selling a large package with nearly 4,000 houses. Auctioning by block or cluster of apartments will help many businesses participate, creating higher competition and success.
In addition, the financial mechanism also needs to be adjusted in the direction of extending payment progress, in line with the reality of capital mobilization and the ability of enterprises to rotate cash flow. At the same time, the conversion of functions to commercial housing must be completed and legally transparent to create confidence for investors.
The Department of Agriculture and Environment said that the auction procedures have been built since 2017, and have now been "nearly completed". The conversion has been unprecedented for a long time, so the management agency took a long time to complete this conversion process, including steps such as determining the authority to decide on auctions; procedures and the auction organizer; establishing ownership of items of common use such as corridors, stairs, walkways, parks; converting from a resettlement housing fund to commercial housing.
There have been opinions that why not convert this housing fund into social housing to solve the shortage of social housing supply in the city? However, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction has also proposed to continue auctioning all 3,790 apartments in the Thu Thiem urban area, not to serve resettlement and move to social housing.
According to the Department of Construction, most of the apartments in the 3,790 apartment area of the new urban area of Thu Thiem have an area of over 70 m2, which does not meet social housing standards. If choosing to switch to social housing, the land use target of a part of 3,790 apartments must be adjusted to resettlement housing and social housing.
