Apartment buyers to sue Keangnam Vina

Keangnam Palace Landmark has been plagued by problems since it opened to the public Photo: Duc Thanh

The representative of the Tu Liem District People’s Court last week announced that the court hearing had been delayed due to incomplete administrative procedures. The ill-fated Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower owners currently face a court case from 10 residents.

Invested by South Korea’s Keangnam Vina and put into operation since 2012, the Keangnam Landmark Tower has experienced a troublesome existence, from labour accidents occurring during its construction, fierce disputes with apartment owners on management fees, tax scrutiny for transfer pricing and now a conflict over apartment size measurements. According to a letter outlining the case for the residents, Keangnam Vina had calculated the apartment’s payment based on US dollar value which is illegal in Vietnam. Keangnam Vina also included all public facilities in the apartment area which also contravened regulations.

Seven of the buyers requested Keangnam Vina adjust the price from US dollars to Vietnamese dong and refund the difference between two currencies.

While the other three buyers refused to pay Keangnam Vina from 2012 and rejected the apartments, demanding Keangnam Vina void the contracts and pay compensation.

This group of buyers provided a range of evidence supposedly proving that Keangnam Vina had seriously violated the agreed contracts and had deliberately attempted to mislead the buyers with untrue information.

According to Le Xuan Hoa, one of the buyers, Keangnam Vina had intentionally cheated her when handing over an apartment without confirming its total area. “I received an apartment in which all of the space for heavy duty supporting columns and utilities boxes were added into the total value. This is not permitted by the authorities,” Hoa said.

Hoa said that after leasing an independent body to re-calculate and re-measure, her apartment’s space reduced from 206.95 to just 181 square metres.

This situation was replicated in the other apartments. On average, each apartment included 15 per cent of its area devoted to public facilities. Every apartment was therefore including VND1 billion ($47,600) worth of space that buyers were unfairly having to pay for.

The Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower has two 48- storey towers with a total of 922 apartments. The extra space would have provided the owners with a cool VND84 billion ($4 million) when they were sold to the buyers at a price of $3,000 per square metre.

Talking with VIR before the court session, a representative from Keangnam Vina said that the company’s leaders would not comment on the court case and had authorised its lawyers to solve this issue in the coming court case, which was replanned to open this week.

The Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower is located on 4.6 hectares on Pham Hung Street, My Dinh in the west of Hanoi.

With the total investment capital of more than $1 billion, the project consists of a 72-storey tower which includes a 5-star hotel, office and apartments, and two 48-storey apartment towers.

The Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower is currently the tallest building in Vietnam and the 17th tallest skyscraper in the world.