HANOI: Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh issued an official dispatch last Sunday asking relevant ministries, agencies and local authorities to take drastic action to ensure the safe, healthy and sustainable development of the real estate market.
Bottlenecks related to legal procedures, credit accessibility, land regulations and pricing have pushed the real estate market into a lot of difficulty although the government has made efforts to address these problems since late 2022.
The PM asked relevant ministries, agencies and local authorities to enhance accountability to remove difficulties for the real estate market, taking it as a pressing issue.
Specifically, the Construction Ministry must complete the legal framework for housing and real estate business.
The focus must be placed on removing bottlenecks, especially in administrative procedures, to speed up the implementation of housing, urban-centre and industrial-park projects to create spillover effects.
The ministry is urged to strengthen the the project to build at least one million apartments for low-income earners and workers in 2021-2030 period, together with raising new solutions to speed up disbursement for social-housing development.
The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry must cut unnecessary administrative procedures and move roadblocks in land procedures and pricing.
It must set up a working group immediately to solve problems related to land leasing, pricing and planning, especially in major cities like Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City.
The State Bank of Vietnam must keep a close watch on the real estate market and credit flows into the sector to improve capital accessibility for buyers and developers.
Feasible solutions must be applied to efficiently implement the 120 trillion dong credit package for social-housing developments, homes for workers and renovations of old apartment buildings.
Besides the government’s determination, action from real estate enterprises play an important role in reviving the property market.
The HCM City Real Estate Association has urged real estate enterprises to implement the prime minister’s directive on restructuring products and reducing housing prices appropriately to give a hand to solve the market difficulties.
Although the government and local authorities have actively raised solutions to reduce difficulties for the realty market, enterprises seemed not to make adequate efforts, especially in restructuring products and lowering housing prices, the association said.
Le Hoang Chau, the association’s president, said that real estate companies should respond to the PM’s call to lower housing prices in the context of the market’s difficulties.
Enterprises should restructure their products towards real market demand and reduce selling prices to ensure appropriateness for different income levels, Chau said.
Chau cited statistics for Ho Chi Minh City, where more than 15,000 apartments were released in the first nine months of the year.
Of this, more than 66% of the apartments were in the high-end category while the rest were medium-cost category, and there were no affordable homes.
While the supply has dropped due to legal bottlenecks since 2020, most supply is of the high-end category, pushing the market into a severe shortage of affordable homes and social-housing projects. — Viet Nam News/ANN
Source: The Star