Vietnam Opens Public Consultation on Rewritten Land, Housing and Real Estate Laws

The Vietnamese government issued Resolution No. 278/NQ-CP on 18 September 2026, ordering ministries to finalise amended versions of the Land Law, the Housing Law and the Law on Real Estate Business, and setting 21 September 2026 as the deadline for submitting them to the National Assembly. Public comment on all three drafts is being collected through the VNeID national digital identity system, putting a rewrite of the entire legal basis for property ownership in Vietnam into an open consultation window that is measured in days rather than months.

What the resolution requires

Resolution 278 splits the work between two ministries. The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment carries the Land Law. The Ministry of Construction carries both the Housing Law and the Law on Real Estate Business. A third ministry, Public Security, is involved in the consultation itself because the comment channel runs through VNeID.

On land pricing, the resolution instructs the drafters to research framework criteria, principles and mechanisms for determining, inspecting and monitoring land price decisions, and to address land rent discrepancies, abandoned land and delays in putting allocated land into use. On rental housing, it requires them to finalise regulations on types of rental housing and to research financial mechanisms covering taxes, fees, land use fees and credit to control rental housing prices.

The instruction that matters most to anyone holding a Vietnamese apartment is narrower and more specific. Resolution 278 directs the Ministry of Construction to clearly define the lifespan of apartment buildings in accordance with the construction lifespan of the building, and to regulate the handling of apartment buildings that have reached the end of that lifespan.

The mechanism

That instruction does not arrive in a vacuum. The Ministry of Construction's draft Housing Law, which the Ministry of Justice appraised earlier this year, already contains the operative language: ownership of an apartment terminates when the apartment building reaches the end of its lifespan, or when it is subject to demolition following fire, explosion, natural disaster, serious deterioration or an identified safety risk.

The draft does not leave owners with nothing at that point. It preserves the right to continue using the land in order to rebuild. Owners can either contribute funds toward a new building, calculated by multiplying usable area by the per-square-metre construction cost at the time of demolition, or surrender the land to the State for investor-led reconstruction. Where no rebuilding takes place under an approved plan, owners receive compensation for land use rights in proportion to their share of the common area.

The draft Law on Real Estate Business moves on a separate track and tightens the sale process. It replaces percentage-based payment milestones with a single ceiling: a seller may not collect more than 95 percent of the contract value until the ownership certificate has been issued to the buyer or lease-purchaser. It removes the buyer's ability to waive the developer's bank guarantee, so a developer must hold a guarantee from a credit institution legally operating in Vietnam against its delivery obligations. It brings condotels, resort villas, officetels and shophouses into the tradeable categories as housing for residential and accommodation purposes, conditioned on the land being state-allocated with the use fee paid or state-leased on a lump-sum basis. It makes standard-form contracts and disclosure obligations mandatory rather than advisory, assigns each property a unique electronic identification code to block dual sales and track payment flows, and hands provincial People's Committees the authority to approve project transfers that previously required the Prime Minister's sign-off.

What it means for a foreign buyer

Foreign individuals buy Vietnamese apartments under a fifty-year ownership term, and no more than 30 percent of the units in a single building may be foreign-held. A statutory building lifespan layered on top of that creates a second clock. A foreign buyer's certificate could in principle outlast the structure it attaches to, and the draft answers that by terminating ownership at the building's end of life and converting the position into a land-use and rebuild entitlement. Anyone underwriting a Vietnamese apartment on a fifty-year horizon now has to ask the age and the designed construction lifespan of the block, not just the years left on the certificate.

The condotel provisions cut the other way. Formalising condotels and officetels as a tradeable housing category, with land tenure conditions attached, is the closest Vietnam has come to resolving a segment where thousands of buyers have waited years for certificates that never issued. The 95 percent payment cap and the compulsory bank guarantee both shift delivery risk back onto developers, alongside the deposit rules already in force.

Context

Vietnam last overhauled this framework with the 2024 Land Law and the accompanying housing and real estate business legislation. This round is a rewrite of that rewrite, driven from the top: a government meeting on 9 September 2026 pressed ministries to complete the three bills together rather than separately, citing Politburo Resolution No. 21-NQ/TW and Notice No. 64-TB/VPTW, and set submission for the National Assembly's second session at the end of 2026.

Nothing in the drafts is law yet. The consultation is open, the National Assembly has not voted, and the text that reaches the floor may differ from what is circulating now. But the direction of travel on apartment tenure sits in a signed government resolution, and buyers weighing a purchase this quarter should read the drafts rather than the current statute.