Under a new proposal, Vietnamese and foreign organizations and individuals will be required to provide identification information such as name, nationality, ID number, and legal documents; type of ownership; address, area, and quantity; duration and form of ownership; and legal status. 

The proposal is from the Ministry of Construction (MOC) which is drafting the decree on the development and management of housing and real estate market databases.

MOC explained that detailed regulations on housing ownership information for organizations and individuals would improve the quality of data collected to serve state management, transparency, and the public dissemination of real estate market information, as well as support policy direction and meet legitimate social demands.

Tran Khanh Quang, General Director of Viet An Hoa Real Estate Investment, said the policy on cleaning and digitizing all real estate data by 2027 is appropriate, but needs to be implemented reasonably.

Currently, several agencies are building land databases, and now MOC has proposed a similar database for housing. “Why doesn’t MOC coordinate with MAE to simplify administrative procedures for citizens? Housing and land documents are issued and managed by state agencies, so requiring citizens to resubmit such information would be cumbersome,” Quang said.

In Hanoi, the city has launched a “90-day land data cleanup” campaign running from September 1 to November 30, 2025. Under the plan, all land parcels in the city will be reviewed, standardized, and assigned unified identification codes to ensure consistency with household, population, and property data.

Many wards and communes across Hanoi have announced the rollout of this campaign. Residents are required to submit photocopies of their land-use right certificates and national ID cards to neighborhood group leaders, apartment building management boards, or members of local working teams.

Many citizens have complained about the request. They cannot understand why state agencies, which issued such certificates, still require such information from people.

Experts have also criticized the request, which they say is wasting people’s time.

Quang proposed that the Ministry of Construction (MOC) coordinate with the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE) to extract existing data and then integrate it into a unified system.

“Citizens only need to update their national ID cards, and this information already exists in the VNeID system. Therefore, the two ministries should first synchronize their data and then integrate it into VNeID. When citizens log in, if any information is missing, they can update it directly. That would be much more accurate and convenient,” Quang added.

One-stop mechanism

Pham Viet Thuan, director of the Institute of Natural Resources and Environmental Economics in HCMC, commented that the proposal requiring organizations and individuals to provide housing ownership information, as suggested in the draft decree, is not feasible from the perspective of state management.

“The most important thing is to record land parcels and cadastral maps and integrate this information into the national ID system, something our Institute has already proposed to the government. The national land database includes parcels and cadastral maps, which are the most critical and are already being updated,” Thuan said.

According to Thuan, if MOC manages housing ownership data separately, it would cause overlap because the fundamental objective of land management is data management, from land parcels, cadastral maps, plot numbers, to parcel numbers, not each individual house on the land.

There are many types of housing in Vietnam: temporary houses, unlicensed or mislicensed houses, titled and untitled houses, shared ownership, disputed properties, and abandoned houses. Therefore, collecting ownership data based on housing rather than land would be unworkable.

“Population and land data should be put under the control of one authority – MAE, which already manages the unified land database. Meanwhile, MOC should focus on improving the process and regulations for issuing or exempting construction permits,” Thuan emphasized.

He added that national population data should start from land parcels; therefore, focusing on a single authority would make it easier to synchronize housing and land information later.

“To digitize legally owned properties, MOC should coordinate with MAE to extract data from cadastral boundary maps of each locality. If so, information about land and houses by parcel number, along with the citizen’s national ID, will be accurately updated,” Thuan recommended.

Hong Khanh