Vietnam Real Estate Projects Face Legal Bottlenecks

The problem is especially visible in the housing segment. HUD’s planned social housing project in Thu Duc is expected to be sold at about 30.7 million dong per square meter, a level that would still be out of reach for many lower-income households in a city where land and construction costs remain elevated. In other words, even government-backed affordable supply is not cheap enough to fully close the gap.

For investors, the message is that Vietnam’s property market is still a stock-picking and policy-driven market rather than a broad cyclical recovery. Developers with clean land banks, fast approval pipelines and exposure to projects that can actually be handed over are likely to outperform those sitting on stranded assets. The same logic applies to banks and lenders: capital is only productive when projects can move from paper to completion.

There are signs that the blockage is easing at the margin, with hundreds of land plots and apartments reportedly cleared for title issuance. But the broader narrative remains the same: liquidity is not the same as deliverability. Until approvals speed up and stuck projects are released, the sector will continue to face a mismatch between demand for homes and the supply that can actually be built and sold.