Legality of property projects must be transparent

Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Government Decree No 44/2022/ND-CP about the development, management and use of the information system about housing and real estate is expected to improve the transparency of the property market.

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 with fines for violations.

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

Lawer Nguyen Thanh Ha, chairman of SBLaw, said that people could find project information about planning and land use plans at portals of districts, provinces, and cities where the projects were located for the information. However, the information was sketchy and not in full.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, only 337 out of 704 district People’s Committees nationwide published the district-level land plans in 2021, accounting for 47.9%.

In addition, the information dissemination by district People’s Committees lacked synchronisation and remained dispersed, making it difficult for residents to search for information adequately. Only 17 per cent published district-level land use plans adequately.

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

Lawyer Bui Quang Tin from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, 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 12-24 months would not be as effective as the measure of centralising documents to an agency, such as the Department of Construction, and requiring this agency to disclose information.

Now that most homebuyers had good access to information thanks to technology, a unified agency to disclose project information would help improve transparency.

Under Decree No 44/2022/ND-CP, Vietnam will develop a database about the real estate market, including information on the country-level, local–level, project–level, transactions and market statistics.

The country and local-level database 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./.