According to a report by the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), from 2015 to 2023, Ho Chi Minh City has 138 commercial housing projects approved for investment. Of these, only 52 projects have been implemented, providing 35,556 apartments and 6,081 low-rise houses.
Of the remaining 86 real estate projects, 30 projects have stopped construction with 21,676 houses, covering an area of more than 210 hectares; 56 projects have not started construction, covering an area of 754 hectares, equivalent to 32,375 houses.
Thus, the total number of real estate products in inventory is up to more than 54,000 units, including 46,986 apartments and 7,065 low-rise houses. These projects are scattered across districts, including central areas such as Tan Tao Residential Area - Zone A, Binh Tan District with an area of more than 330 hectares in the process of site clearance.
Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of HoREA, said that the delay in resolving inventory not only wastes land resources but also creates an imbalance between supply and demand, with a surplus of luxury housing but a shortage of affordable housing. This is the main reason why housing prices have been increasing continuously in recent years, far beyond the affordability of middle- and low-income people. In addition, the above inventory situation is due to legal problems related to land and real estate laws. Although these laws have been amended in 2024, it will take time to come into effect.
The Department of Construction also said that no commercial housing projects were transferred in the past 11 months. Mr. Chau commented that this result shows that project transfer activities (M&A) are being blocked despite the great actual demand of many investors to restructure investments, overcome difficulties, and create cash flow.
Therefore, the Association believes that it is necessary to remove bottlenecks in M&A activities to both remove difficulties for businesses, unblock M&A activities, support the real estate market to recover, develop safely, healthily, sustainably and increase State budget revenue.
In addition, Mr. Le Hoang Chau also pointed out that the investment process for construction projects still goes through many complicated approval stages. Currently, many large real estate projects in Ho Chi Minh City are still being inspected, examined, or have not been fully licensed for implementation.
"Over the past two years, 64 real estate projects of 57 enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City have encountered prolonged legal problems. By July 2023, 9 projects had their problems resolved, but the rest are still waiting for review," said Mr. Chau.
The legal settlement in the past time has not had much clear progress, especially projects with interspersed land. According to statistics, currently in Ho Chi Minh City alone, there are about 126 projects affected by legal progress and construction progress related to the issue of interspersed public land.
Although this issue has been previously regulated in Decree 148/2020 or recently the Land Law 2024, it has not been thoroughly resolved. Furthermore, the calculation of land use fees still has many problems, which is also the cause of 60-70% of project legal problems in the past nationwide.
Notably, many real estate businesses are currently facing difficulties in capital sources, especially businesses with high bond debt. According to statistics, the amount of corporate bonds maturing in 2024 is up to more than 300,000 billion VND, of which, real estate bonds alone are more than 130,000 billion VND. This is a very large number in the current difficult liquidity situation of the real estate market.
