HCMC Has 1,200 Stalled Projects to Clean Up. What That Means If You Are a Foreign Buyer.

Vietnam has a stalled-project problem, and Ho Chi Minh City has been told to fix part of it on a deadline. The central government instructed HCMC to fully resolve 12 delayed projects under the city's authority by January 2026, and to clarify the legal obstacles at several other big developments that remain stuck. That sounds like progress. For foreigners holding deposits, it is also a warning shot.

The 12 projects are the visible tip. Behind them sit 86 developments in HCMC that did not proceed as approved. Of those, 30 are halted, with about 21,676 units sitting on more than 210 hectares of land. Across Vietnam, central authorities are working through more than 1,200 stalled projects. If you bought off-plan from a developer who is now in administrative limbo, the system you are waiting on is the same one trying to triage 1,200 other situations at the same time.

Read more about this on our blog: https://bektu.com/blog/vietnam-stalled-projects-cleanup-foreign-buyers-2026-may

What "stalled" actually means in Vietnam

A stalled project does not always look like a dusty construction site. Sometimes the tower is finished and people are living in it, but the developer never delivered the Pink Book (So hong, the certificate of ownership). Sometimes the project broke ground, paused, and the land has been sitting under tarps for two years while the developer fights a zoning approval or a land-use re-pricing.

Vietnam classifies the issue in roughly three buckets. The first is legal, where the developer cannot complete title issuance because of unpaid land-use fees, unresolved Giay chung nhan dau tu (investment certificate) issues, or planning approvals (quy hoach) that contradict what was sold. The second is financial, where the developer ran out of cash and stopped construction. The third is administrative, where the People's Committee (Uy ban nhan dan) of the district or province has to re-approve something, and the file sits.

For foreign buyers, the practical answer to all three is the same. Your deposit is held by a company that cannot legally close the sale, and you are an unsecured creditor unless your sale and purchase agreement (SPA) was written tightly.

Why this matters even if your developer looks healthy

Vietnam's Housing Law caps how much a developer can collect before handover at 70 percent for a local developer, and 50 percent for a foreign-invested developer. The final 5 percent is supposed to be paid only when the Pink Book is issued. On paper, you should never be more than 70 percent exposed to a developer that has not handed you keys. In practice, foreigners often hit that ceiling because the deposit-to-handover window is typically 2 to 3 years, and the handover-to-Pink Book window adds another 2 to 5 years.

That means a buyer who put down a 30 percent deposit in 2023 for a 2025 handover may be sitting in 2026 with 70 percent paid, no keys, no Pink Book, and a developer whose project just got added to a "stalled" list.

The use points in your SPA

Most foreign buyers never read the Vietnamese-language SPA carefully. They read an English translation provided by the developer's sales team. This is a common gap.

A typical Vietnamese SPA gives buyers two real tools when handover slips. The first is a default interest clause. If the developer misses the contractual handover date, they owe interest on the delayed amount, often at 1.5 percent per month, the same rate the developer would charge a buyer for a late payment. The second is a unilateral termination right. If the developer is past handover by the number of days stated in the SPA, the buyer can cancel and demand a refund of every dong paid plus a compensation amount that often equals 20 to 30 percent of the apartment price.

These rights are real, but they exist only if (1) the clauses are actually in the Vietnamese text, (2) the trigger dates are written in calendar form, not "estimated," and (3) you can prove your payments. English summaries sometimes omit these clauses or rewrite them as "best efforts." A bilingual lawyer paid to read the Vietnamese text before signing is the cheapest insurance in Vietnamese real estate.

What foreign buyers should do this month

If you are exposed to an off-plan project in HCMC, Hanoi, Da Nang, Nha Trang, or Phu Quoc, three actions are worth doing in May 2026.

First, find out whether your project is on the city's stalled list. Da Nang and HCMC publish project status data through the So Xay Dung (Department of Construction). Hanoi's data is patchier but available on request through the Department of Planning and Investment. If your project name is on a list, you have a very different conversation with the developer than if it is not.

Second, pull your SPA in Vietnamese and translate the dispute, penalty, and termination clauses yourself. Do not rely on the sales brochure. The Vietnamese version is what a court or arbitrator will read.

Third, check the developer's delivery history across other projects. A developer that has delivered ten buildings on time and one late is in a different category from one that has three stalled towers and a bond default. Bektu publishes developer delivery records and bond status, including details on names like Hung Thinh and Novaland that have featured in the bond-default cycle. You can search a developer at bektu.com before sending another payment milestone.

The slow-motion bailout

The government's January 2026 deadline for HCMC's 12 priority projects has come and gone in name only. Most of those projects are still working through the legal queue. The amended Land Law, effective since January 2025, was supposed to remove some of the friction, and the National Assembly passed Resolution No. 254/2025/QH15 in December 2025 to address implementation difficulties, with effect from January 1, 2026. The new Investment Law takes effect on March 1, 2026, with conditional business-line provisions kicking in on July 1, 2026. Vietnam is methodically working through this. Methodical is not fast.

If you are a foreign buyer, the takeaway is uncomfortable but useful. The slow cleanup of stalled projects is a feature, not a bug, of how this market is being repaired. Plan for delays. Read your Vietnamese contract. Check developer history before you trust a new brochure. And never assume that the polished sales gallery represents the legal reality of the tower it sits next to.