For years, Vietnam’s real estate market has operated mainly under a familiar mindset: develop housing to sell and encourage homeownership. However, as home prices keep rising far beyond what many people can afford, renting has become increasingly common.

More and more people want long-term rental housing. But what the market lacks isn’t just affordable homes - it’s a true rental ecosystem where residents can live securely with reasonable costs, stable contracts, full infrastructure, and guaranteed rights.

Blocking ‘flippers’, attracting real residents

Hanoi Vice Mayor Truong Viet Dung noted that Hanoi is one of the first localities to propose the "multi-purpose urban area" model.

This urban area will include various housing types such as resettlement housing, social housing, commercial housing, and potentially official residence housing. 

Among these, resettlement housing is expected to account for about 40–50 percent, social housing 20–25 percent, and the remainder will be commercial housing at roughly 30–40 percent.

Lawyer Pham Thanh Tuan from the Hanoi Bar Association and a real estate legal expert commented that the draft scheme to build the "multi-purpose urban area" model is a highly novel policy, appearing for the very first time in Vietnam.

According to Tuan, from a legal perspective, this is a pilot mechanism based on the decentralization of power from the Central Government under the Law on the Capital and Resolution 258/2025/QH15.

"Although it is called multi-purpose due to its diverse housing types and urban functions, the entire model targets a single, quite explicit objective: serving genuine housing needs," he said.

For many years, the majority of urban areas have operated under market mechanisms, while social housing usually accounts for only a small proportion of the project structure (20 percent of the total residential land area in a project). But with this new model, the role of welfare housing is placed at the center.

"This is a massive shift in real estate development thinking," Tuan said.

A control mechanism has been proposed for commercial market-rate housing. According to the draft, the developer's profit for the commercial housing portion is capped at a maximum of 15 percent of its total construction investment cost. All costs, revenues, and pricing plans must be vetted, monitored, or audited by regulatory authorities in accordance with regulations before entering the market.

Furthermore, buyers will be restricted from transferring the property for three years from the date full payment is made. If they wish to resell during this period, buyers can only transfer it back to the developer at a price not exceeding the amount stated in the contract.

Lawyer Tuan said this is one of the most serious proposals ever introduced for the commercial housing segment. However, he also noted that a scheme heavily leaning toward social welfare objectives will inevitably spark debates regarding market mechanisms.

When a project faces profit caps, price controls, and transfer restrictions, its attractiveness to businesses will decline. In particular, having to undergo monitoring and auditing throughout the project's life cycle will increase operational pressure, Tuan warned.

Combating speculation

Pham Duc Toan, director general of EZ Property, said that restricting the transfer of commercial housing for three years could help filter out short-term speculative cash flows.

Even so, according to Toan, the impact on the entire Hanoi market might not be too substantial because the scale of the projects subject to this application does not yet account for a significant share of the total supply.

"The greatest effectiveness of the policy is not in dragging down the general price floor on a large scale, but rather in its ability to help these urban areas fill up faster with actual residents," he said.

He said many urban areas currently fall into a "many houses, few occupants" situation due to a high speculation rate. When short-term buying and reselling are restricted, projects will have the opportunity to form real resident communities, driving the development of services and amenities.

He also noted that for social housing, current laws already mandate a 5-year transfer restriction. Therefore, if implemented, the novelty of this scheme will primarily affect the commercial market-rate housing segment within mixed-use mega urban areas.

Toan believes that to tackle the vacant and speculative housing, the most effective measure is still a tax policy on second homes or vacant homes.

Hong Khanh