Pursuant to current regulations, when developing a social housing project, the developer must spend 20% of the total number of apartments to serve the rental needs of people. However, many rental apartments in social housing projects have been left vacant as people have no interest in these units.
According to Thang Long Co., Ltd., for a long time, the firm have offered 99 apartments for rent at Dong Hoi Social Housing Project (Dong Anh District) with the rental of only VND 66,617 per sqm per month (including 5% VAT and 2% maintenance fee), but there has been no one registering for these apartments.
A very few of apartments for rent in some social housing projects in Hanoi are occupied.
The Phu Lam Social Housing Project (Ha Dong District) also experienced a similar situation with 384 vacant apartments. Although the developer has announced its offer to the 4th time, no tenant has registered to rent the apartments. Even at the AZ Thang Long social and commercial service complex (Hoai Duc District), its developer has tried to the 8th time but 321 apartments have remained uninhabited.
The slump of apartments for rent also takes place in many social housing projects in Quoc Oai, Kien Hung… making it hard for developers. They still have to pay interest for bank loan, while the apartments that have left vacant for long term will face degradation soon.
In some rare inhabited projects, residents are worried rental will increase, although the current rental is quite low. The contract period of these rental apartments is 5 years, so people have a concern that after the period, rental will rise like other previous rental housing models of Hanoi.
Nguyen Quoc Trung, Deputy Director of Handico 5, the developer of Dai Kim Social Housing Project, said all profits from social housing projects, including selling and leasing, trading are controlled by the State at 10%. But with nearly 100 apartments for rent that have to wait for 5 years to be sold, the firm faces a lots of challenges. The tenants themselves also want to buy apartments they are renting for long-term stability, but they are also time-controlled. Therefore, Trung suggested the policy of lease of social housing should be more flexible for both developers and home buyers.
