Offices, retail premises

In principle, all construction works will be monitored and examined from the day they kick off to the day they are put into operation.

Offices for lease and retail premises are the market segments which first suffered from the pandemic. As enterprises and individuals had to scale down their business, they gave back retail premises to landlords.

As a result, landlords had to lower the rents to attract more tenants. Some of them even exempted rents during lockdown to retain clients.

A market survey firm reported that the office rent dropped by 5-10 percent compared with the time before the pandemic, while retail premises fell by 30-50 percent.

61 slow projects cancelled

In December 2020, the HCM City People’s Council approved the cancellation of the plan to take back land of 61 projects.

The land was planned to be recovered in 2015-2017. However, to date, investors have not implemented the approved plan on using the land.

These include commercial housing projects, such as The Queen Square in Binh Thanh district registered by The Queen Square Co Ltd; Long Phuoc Garden in district 9 of Thanh Nien Media Group; and Sanctuary Cove villas in district 9 of Beelwynn – Hung Phu joint venture.

Apartment dwellers sue developers

Disputes between apartment dwellers and developers are not a new issue. However, the disputes escalated in 2020. Apartment buyers asked developers to complete legal procedures so they could obtain pink books (the “Certificate of Land Use Right and Ownership of House and Other Assets on the Land”).

The dispute between apartment buyers and developers became so serious at The EverRich Infinity apartment project developed by Phat Dat Real Estate Development JSC in district 5 that the case was brought to court.

The dispute between apartment buyers and developers became so serious at The EverRich Infinity apartment project developed by Phat Dat Real Estate Development JSC in district 5 that the case was brought to court. A dweller sued the company because the company sold parking lots at the apartment building.

Classifying apartments to grant pink books

The HCM City People’s Committee has instructed local departments to classify land into two groups.

The first one comprises separate apartments with some closed work items. All the project land area is defined as housing land.

The second one comprises large-scale apartment projects with many items for public service. In addition to the land for apartments, there are other utility works. The land area for apartments is determined according to the land use structure of the approved projects.

The instruction is expected to help settle the problems in granting pink books which have existed for many years.

Problems in splitting land plots

After three years of implementing the regulation on the minimum area of the land plots to be split, some problems have arisen.

The HCM City People’s Committee has instructed the local Department of Planning and Architecture to guide districts’ localities to review the implementation of the urban development plan. If the plan is no longer feasible, it is necessary to amend the plan to give legal benefits to people.

GIS, remote sensing technology used in land management

In August 2020, the HCM City People’s Committee approved a plan on utilizing GIS (geographic information system) and remote sensing technology to serve land management, urban planning and construction.

The system connects and synchronizes data, and provides timely information to serve land use inspection, supervision and instruction. With the system, information about land, urban development planning and construction plans will be open to the public.

Violations of construction regulations decrease

As of the end of August 2020, 504 construction works had been found violating regulations on construction, or 1.9 violation cases a day, a sharp decrease of 77 percent compared with the same period last year (8.5 cases a day).

In principle, all construction works will be monitored and examined from the day they kick off to the day they are put into operation.

New price levels for houses

In 2019-2020, the HCM City real estate market faced a sharp fall in supply because of problems related to legal procedures, decreased land fund, Covid-19, and the supply/demand imbalance.

A market analysis firm reported that the selling price of apartments in HCM City is at VND45 million per square meter.

Few low-cost housing projects

Of 15,000 houses belonging to 26 projects that meet requirements to mobilize capital in HCM City, 5,339 high-end apartments have selling prices of over VND40 million per square meter and 9,585 mid-end apartments VND20-40 million per square meter.

There are few low-cost housing products priced at below VND20 million (163 products), while the figure was 12,355 in the same period last year.

Bogus projects

In 2019, Alibaba, which specialized in selling ‘bogus’ property projects, was discovered and eliminated. In 2020, many companies like this were under investigation.

These companies don’t have licenses to develop projects, but they fabricate maps of projects and sell projects that don’t exist.

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