Vietnam Clears Its Housing and Real Estate Bills for the Assembly Session Opening October 17

Vietnam's National Assembly Standing Committee ruled on 2 October that the draft revised Law on Housing and the draft amended Law on Real Estate Business are both eligible to go to the full legislature, with possible adoption at the second session, which opens on 17 October. Both bills were cleared at the Standing Committee's seventh session after verification reports from two National Assembly committees, leaving a fifteen-day gap between the procedural gate and the floor.

What it means for a foreign buyer

If you are negotiating a villa, townhouse or any other landed home in Vietnam, the runway is now measured in weeks. The draft Law on Housing that the Ministry of Construction released on 13 September no longer allows foreigners to own landed houses at all, and that text has now passed the committee stage that precedes a vote. Apartments survive the rewrite but on fixed terms: foreign buyers may hold up to 30 percent of the apartments in a condominium building, for a maximum of 50 years with one possible 50-year extension, and not in areas designated for national defence or security. A buyer who wants a landed home under the current framework has to complete, not merely sign, before the new law takes effect, and a buyer who cannot complete in time should be renegotiating into an apartment or out of the deal rather than waiting to see what passes.

The companion bill cuts the other way and is worth reading if you are buying off plan. In the draft published in early September, Article 26 of the amended Law on Real Estate Business bars a seller from collecting more than 95 percent of contract value until the ownership certificate is issued to the purchaser, replacing the earlier milestone-based percentage schedule, and proposes removing the option to waive the bank guarantee requirement. That leaves 5 percent of the purchase price unpaid and in your hands as leverage until the pink book actually arrives, which is the single point at which most foreign off-plan disputes in Vietnam turn. Article 45 of the same draft would make standard-form contracts obligatory and require public disclosure on the Housing and Real Estate Market Information System before execution, so the contract you are handed becomes a document you can compare against a published template.

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Check which version of each bill is on the Assembly's desk before you price either change into a deal.

What changed

The status, not yet the law. On 19 September the Ministry of Construction opened public consultation on the rewritten Land, Housing and Real Estate Business laws. On 2 October the Standing Committee heard the Government's submissions and the verification reports, recorded that deputies broadly backed many of the changes, and found both the housing and real estate business bills eligible for the National Assembly to consider. Deputies also asked for further review before final submission, so the texts can still move.

On the housing side the stated emphasis is rental housing and a lower compliance burden. On the real estate business side the draft cuts investment and business conditions, simplifies rules on registered names and business registration, reduces training certification requirements for trading floors, brokers, managers and consultants, sharpens the definitions of real estate business and of a real estate project, and trims administrative procedures. The September draft also widens what can legally be traded: Article 5 adds housing for residential and accommodation purposes, which covers condotels, resort villas, officetels and shophouses, and Article 3.1 extends the definition to part of a construction work and to floor area within a building.

The mechanism

The Standing Committee's seventh session was chaired by National Assembly Vice President Nguyen Khac Dinh, with verification handled by the Committee for Legal and Judicial Affairs and the Committee for Economic and Financial Affairs. The Ministry of Construction is the drafting agency for both bills. The removal of foreign ownership of landed houses is not a standalone policy choice by the ministry: it is drawn from Resolution 21-NQ/TW of 28 July 2026, which holds that land cannot be privatised and that foreigners cannot receive transfers of land use rights. A provision anchored in a Party resolution is considerably harder to amend on the floor than one the ministry proposed on its own.

The second session is a large one. The Government plans to file 95 documents, submissions and reports, with 17 draft laws heading to the session, so floor time per bill is limited and the committee stage carries more weight than usual.

Context

Foreign buyers have never held much Vietnamese residential property. Since the 2023 Law on Housing took effect only 1,519 homes were acquired by foreigners, against a total estimated stock of more than 6,000 foreign-owned homes nationally. Foreigners cannot hold land use rights directly in any case, so apartment ownership has always been the practical route, with the landed-house allowance narrow and lightly used. The rewrite therefore removes a right that few exercised while codifying the one that most buyers actually rely on, and it does so inside a legislative package that also rewrites the Land Law.

Sources

- NA Standing Committee discusses draft revised housing, real estate business laws

- NA Standing Committee discusses draft revised housing, real estate business laws, Viet Nam News

- NA, Government's Party committees meet on legislature's second session agenda

- Vietnam considers limiting foreign home ownership to apartments

- Vietnam, Draft Amendment To Real Estate Trading Law: Market Reinforcement, Conventus Law

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