Lack of housing, projects remain abandoned
In Ho Chi Minh City, there are still many resettlement housing or social housing projects that were implemented many years ago but then "froze" - causing damage to home buyers and wasting land.
For example, the resettlement housing project combined with business in Subdivision 11B Nguyen Huu Tho Street (Nha Be District), with the commercial name Park Vista, with a scale of 680 apartments, invested by Dong Mekong Construction Production Trading Service Company Limited. Since 2016, the investor has opened the project for sale and is expected to hand over the houses in 2019.
However, in 2020, when the project had just completed the rough construction, the Ho Chi Minh City Inspectorate determined that the investor had committed many violations from the time of investment preparation to project implementation. After that, the project stopped construction and has been "inactive" until now. This affects the rights of home buyers, because since 2016, many customers have paid for apartments to Dong Mekong Company as agreed in the sales contract.
In addition, there is another reality that completed resettlement housing projects are still abandoned. According to a report from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, there are currently more than 11,000 apartments and resettlement land in the city that are still vacant and uninhabited.
The most famous is the Binh Khanh Resettlement Area, which is part of the 12,500-apartment resettlement program for the Thu Thiem mega-urban area. This resettlement complex is divided into two projects with 2,220 and 1,570 apartments, respectively. Ho Chi Minh City still plans to auction the above apartments. The auction is expected to be held before November 2025.
It is known that these apartments have been auctioned by Ho Chi Minh City 3 times. The first time was in 2017 with a starting price of 8,800 billion VND. The second time was in 2018 with a starting price of 9,100 billion VND. The third time was in 2021 with a starting price of 9,900 billion VND. However, all 3 times failed because there were no bidders.
Need feasible solutions
Previously, the city also had a policy to request to convert resettlement apartments for the Thu Thiem New Urban Area into commercial apartments, but this, according to a representative of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, also had many problems.
For example, the original price per square meter alone is up to 27 million VND, not including compensation, land costs, and other costs according to loan interest. This price is too high and unfeasible.
The option of converting these apartments to social housing is also not suitable because social housing must be exempted from land use fees in the cost price, but compensation costs must still be calculated, so the price remains very high.
On the other hand, social housing is only allowed to be within the area of 20 m2 to 70 m2. It is known that the resettlement area in Binh Khanh ward only has about 30% of apartments meeting this area and are scattered in each apartment building, so it is impossible to arrange social housing scattered in each building.
Speaking of, the reason for the situation of "unsold" resettlement housing, according to many experts, is that many resettlement areas are built in areas far from the center, lacking public utilities and services. This reduces the attractiveness and makes it difficult for people to move and live.
To solve this problem, in addition to auctioning, some experts suggest that the State can study combining resettlement housing and social housing in the same segment.
Resettlement projects will have access to capital and interest from the 120,000 billion VND credit package to complete infrastructure, technical and social infrastructure items like other housing projects to attract people to live there.
Investors will have a percentage of the project housing fund for commercial business to recover investment capital. Or convert to social housing but must ensure compliance with the local housing development program and plan.
In particular, leasing is also one of the effective solutions to overcome the situation of "abandoning" and ineffective use of this asset.
