Data collection will only be truly effective if the construction ministry establishes a way to connect and share information, instead of requiring re-declaration.

In a draft decree on building and managing database on the housing and real estate market, currently seeking opinions, the construction ministry proposes that organizations and individuals must provide housing ownership information for integration into the national information system from 2026.

Risk of duplication

Lawyer Diep Nang Binh, Head of the Tinh Thong Law Office, said the proposal is a necessary step to complete the national database on housing and the real estate market, in line with the 2023 Housing Law. It provides the legal foundation for transparent and modern data management.

“If implemented properly, data integration will make the market more transparent, reduce speculation, prevent double pricing and tax evasion, as well as support planning, valuation, and property taxation. Citizens and businesses will also benefit by submitting information only once, as the data will be shared across administrative systems,” Binh said.

However, he warned that duplication of data and increased administrative burdens are real risks, since information such as name, ID number, address, area, and legal status already exists in the land, population, and tax databases. Without a shared data mechanism, asking citizens to re-declare would be wasteful and frustrating.

Binh emphasized that the priority should be connecting existing databases, only requesting citizens to supplement missing details while ensuring personal data protection. He proposed a two-phase roadmap: 2026 for cross-checking and standardizing data, and 2027 for completing missing declarations.

Agreeing with MOC’s plan, Tran Xuan Luong, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Real Estate Market Research Institute, noted that the database development should have been implemented long ago.

However, Luong pointed out that the Ministry’s proposal overlaps with the work already being done by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MAE) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) in developing the national land database.

“One agency collects land data, while another gathers housing data. By nature, real estate includes both land-use rights and ownership of buildings attached to the land. This means that MOC will also have to update land data as well. As a result, a meaningful initiative could become bureaucratic, time-consuming, and duplicative,” he said.

Drawing from South Korea and Japan, Luong suggested that Vietnam should develop a unified national database covering both housing and land for more effective and consistent management.

“A National Center for Land and Housing Data should be established under a single management body to oversee all information related to land, houses, and attached structures,” he proposed.

Without integration, there will be “multiple versions of the truth”

Meanwhile, local authorities and land management agencies have also asked citizens to submit land ownership information under a ‘land information cleaning’ campaign. Lawyer Diep Nang Binh voiced his concern about overlapping data between the land management agency, local governments, and the Ministry of Construction.

Citizens have repeatedly provided similar information during land registration, issuance of land-use certificates, and ownership updates. If the Ministry continues to require separate declarations in 2026 without integrating data systems, this will increase administrative burden and fragment national data.

Under the principle of “one source – multiple targets”, personal identification data already exists in the National Population Database (Ministry of Public Security), while land plot and ownership information resides in the National Land Database (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment).

Therefore, according to Binh, MOC should only access and automatically synchronize this existing data through the National Data Sharing Platform, requesting citizens to provide only additional housing-specific information (such as building type, floor area, and legal status) not found in other systems.

“Instead of requiring people to declare again, the Ministry should focus on establishing data connection and sharing mechanisms. This approach aligns with the principle of ‘citizens declare once’ stated in the 2023 Electronic Transactions Law,” Binh said.

He also warned that if ministries and agencies fail to synchronize their systems, data overlap and inconsistency will become inevitable.

“If each agency builds its own data repository without interconnection, there will be ‘multiple versions of the truth’, when the same property has different records for size, value, or legal status across agencies. This could lead to errors in land valuation, property taxation, and urban planning, wasting resources and eroding public trust,” he cautioned.

Nguyen Le