The Vietnam Real Estate Market Evaluation Research Institute (VARS IRE) said that from 2023 to now, Vietnam's credit policy and real estate market handling have gradually shifted from clearing liquidity to orienting targeted capital flows. The first phase focused on preventing the legal - bond - credit spiral through Resolution 33/NQ-CP, Decree 08/2023/ND-CP and policies to restructure debt repayment terms. After that, capital flows were more specifically oriented towards social housing, young people buying houses, feasible projects and areas identified as priorities.
This is a suitable direction because the difficulties of the current real estate market are not only in lack of capital, but also related to project legality, land costs, product structure, absorption capacity and buyer confidence.
The social housing credit program is an example. The program has a scale of 145,000 billion VND from 9 commercial banks, but by the end of May 2026, the accumulated disbursement result only reached about 12,440 billion VND. The large gap between the allocated capital source and the actual disbursed capital volume shows that the problem of the market is not simply lack of money.
If the project is not legally sufficient, the selling price is not suitable, the product is not in line with the needs, or the buyer is not able to repay the debt, and especially the procedures are complicated and have many barriers, preferential interest rates are not enough to create a sustainable demand. Credit only becomes effective when it comes with a project that has the ability to be implemented, smooth procedures, and borrowers have the ability to repay the debt.
Currently, data between banks, businesses, projects and buyers is still fragmented. The ability to identify a project at risk of insolvency early is also not clear enough. If this stage is not improved, the "credit priority" policy risks becoming an administrative capital allocation mechanism instead of a risk management tool based on data.
VARS IRE believes that what needs to be changed in the coming period is credit management thinking. Instead of considering real estate as a field with a uniform level of risk and applying a common control mechanism, policies need to shift to risk assessment based on borrowers, assets, capital use purposes and debt repayment capacity.
Accordingly, it is necessary to classify projects to orient capital flows. The Government can assign the Ministry of Construction to coordinate with the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, localities and the State Bank to study the mechanism for evaluating and classifying projects according to their implementation and recovery capabilities.
VARS IRE proposes that it is possible to study and classify projects into 3 groups. Group A includes projects that are legally sufficient, have the ability to be completed, have a large spillover effect and mainly lack capital to continue implementation. Group B is projects that are still recoverable but need restructuring, such as supplementing equity, adjusting business plans or restructuring debt obligations. Group C includes projects that are no longer recoverable, need to be transferred, liquidated or handled according to regulations.
The classification is aimed at correctly identifying the level of risk and orienting capital flows; lending decisions still fall under the responsibility and authority of each bank.
All credit priority policies need to have clear criteria, deadlines and post-inspection mechanisms. Policy effectiveness needs to be assessed not only through committed capital and disbursement, but also the number of completed projects, the number of houses put into use, the number of people who have access to capital and the quality of credit after support. In the immediate future, it is possible to focus on completing data and piloting project classification; the expansion of new mechanisms needs to be based on actual results and risk control capacity.
VARS IRE believes that controlling credit in a egalitarian way will lose the sustainable growth momentum for the real estate market - which is in an increasingly high differentiation phase between projects meeting real needs and suspended projects to mobilize capital from buyers.
Therefore, real estate credit needs to focus on refinancing projects that meet the conditions and are legally safe to promote market recovery, avoiding consequences for liquidity, confidence, bad debts as well as economic growth.
In parallel with that, it is necessary to control the level of credit concentration and debt repayment capacity to ensure the safety of the banking system, limit risk accumulation and prevent risks from the real estate market from spreading to the financial system.
