Government Decree improves transparency of property projects

The Law on Real Estate Business 2014 and Decree No 117/2015/ND-CP already regulate the publication of information on real estate projects for sale, which includes fines for violations.

However, the published information on the legality of projects remains half-opened, thereby making it easier to sell products while punishments remained too light.

Lawer Nguyen Thanh Ha, chairman of SBLaw, said that people could find information on the project, particularly its land use plans, at portals of districts, provinces, and cities where the projects are located. However, this information was vague and not informative enough.

According to the UN Development Programme, only 337 out of 704 district People’s Committees nationwide published district-level land plans last year, thereby accounting for 47.9% of the total.

Furthermore, the information dissemination by district People’s Committees lacked synchronisation and remained dispersed, a factor which made it challenging for residents to search for information adequately. In line with this, only 17% published district-level land use plans in an adequate manner.

Ha assessed that the existing regulations required developers to make public legal information regarding projects, however, most were advertising without important legal documents such as construction permits and 1-500 scale planning.

Furthermore, lawyer Bui Quang Tin from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association said it was important to have a unified and centralised form of information disclosure for people to easily access.

Even the introduction of heavy punishments for not fully disclosing legal documents of projects, such as forcing a business stoppage for 12 to 24 months, would not be an effective measure in comparison to centralising documents to an agency, such as the Department of Construction. Other efforts could include requiring this agency to disclose information.

Now that the majority of homebuyers have good access to information thanks to technology, a unified agency which discloses project information would help improve transparency.

Under the terms of the Decree, the country will develop a database about the real estate market, including information on the country-level, local–level, project–level, transactions, and market statistics.

The nation and local-level databases include legal documents, project information and transactions, tax data, real estate broker certificates, outstanding loans, foreign direct investment in real estate, and bond issuance of real estate enterprises.

The project-level database includes general information, licenses, types of real estate projects, transactions, prices, and inventories.

The database can be accessed at batdongsan.xaydung.gov.vn. The housing and real estate market information system will be managed by the Ministry of Construction and local departments of constructions.