Recently, a series of social housing projects in Hanoi have announced the opening for sale with a large number of apartments. For example, the Rice City Long Chau project (Bo De ward) is receiving applications for first-round purchase and rental online, with a total of 1,765 apartments for sale. The Kim Hoa social housing project (Tien Thang commune) also opened the first phase of sale with 408 apartments, the application period will last until November 5, 2025. Meanwhile, the Kim Chung Social Housing Project is expected to receive documents for buying, renting, and leasing apartments in CT3 building from November 10 to December 19, 2025.
However, although many projects were opened for sale at the same time, people reported that the preparation and submission process still encountered many difficulties, especially in the technical stage and approval procedures.
At the Rice City Long Chau social housing project invested by the consortium of Him Lam Thu Do Joint Stock Company and BIC Vietnam Joint Stock Company, many people reported that the online registration system is constantly having problems. The website is often overloaded, slow to access, even suspended or cannot be logged in. In some cases, even though the application has been completed, the confirmation code cannot be received via email, causing the application to not be recognized by the system.
Mr. Minh Khoi (Hanoi) said that the investor announced that it would accept applications from October 1 to November 4 (excluding Sundays), receiving only about 70 applications per day. Although he had kept a low time to open the registration early, after 7 consecutive days he still could not submit the application due to the system reporting an error, or enough applications per day.
Ms. Le Huyen shared that after many years of renting a room, her family wanted to buy a social housing apartment to stabilize their long-term living. However, after 8 consecutive days of persistently submitting the application online, she still could not submit it successfully. "I have been waiting for my may since early morning, sometimes I fast all the meals because I am afraid of missing the time to submit my application, but the system keeps reporting errors. Now submitting an application requires not only perseverance but also luck" - Ms. Huyen said.
Many people who are subject to additional documents said that, although they have paid in full, they have not received feedback from the investor for more than a week. This makes them worried that they may miss the deadline or not be eligible to buy a house.
Rice City Long Chau is the first social housing project in Hanoi to pilot the form of online application submission. However, in reality, many people believe that this process needs to be more improved to ensure the rights of the people.
Mr. Nguyen Van Dinh - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Realtors (VARS) - shared that currently, many workers, although having urgent housing needs, cannot access social housing at their workplace or workplace due to not meeting the conditions for confirming their permanent or temporary residence status according to regulations.
Some groups of people are really disadvantaged but are excluded due to income criteria; the requirement for minimum capital when borrowing to buy a house - 20% is a big challenge for low-income people, especially unskilled workers, young workers who have not accumulated; seriously lacking social housing products for rent; there is no separate policy for seasonal workers.
To remove existing concerns, localities must proactively issue support policies suitable to the specific needs of actual needs: Developing rental housing, diversifying models, selecting the right groups of subjects with real needs. And strengthen inspection, supervision, and strictly handle acts of policy profiteering, harassment, and making implementation difficult.
Regarding output policies, it is necessary to be transparent and simplify procedures for determining beneficiaries, moving from the pre-inspection to post-inspection mechanism. There are policies to support leasing and hire-purchase for groups of workers who do not have enough financial capacity to buy a house. Build a national database system on social housing to ensure fairness, transparency and synchronization in access.
