Land use rights for condotels remain stalled amid lack of thorough guidance

Condotel Movenpick Phu Quoc in Kien Giang Province. Source wikiland.vn

Decree No.10/2023/ND-CP dated April 3 on amendments to the Law on Land, which regulates the issuance of land use and housing rights certificates, known as a pink book, for condotels has been rendered useless.

Pham Nam Son, director of Danang Department of Natural Resources and Environment, confirmed that the central city has not issued pink books for any condotel projects because it is waiting for circular guidance.

“Currently, our department is collecting details of all the issues and sending them to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment for a resolution,” Son said.

Meanwhile, in the central province of Khanh Hoa, a hot spot in resort real estate, no new condotel projects have been granted a pink book.

The reason, according to a representative of Khanh Hoa Department of Construction, is because Decree 10 allows buyers of projects such as condotel and officetels on commercial and service land to register ownership. However, no standard procedure for receiving and processing documents has yet been created.

“The main unit responsible for issuing pink books locally is struggling to build a process and send it to related departments to collect opinions and receive applications from unit owners,” the representative said.

Nguyen Thanh Ha from SB Law Office said that to apply Decree 10 in practice, it needed to be accompanied by specific written instructions for localities to apply and handle in the area.

“Localities will be responsible and urgently implement the decree’s contents, thereby creating motivation to regain the confidence of investors when participating in resort real estate investment,” Ha said.

“This is just at the stage of issuing a decree and there are no specific instructions yet, so to promote the issuance of pink books for condotels, there needs to be guidance from the government to ministries and localities, especially from certification registration agencies and this guidance has to be issued as soon as possible.”

According to Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), Decree 10 stipulates certification of ownership of construction works attached to land for commercial and service land use for tourist accommodation purposes, but the revised regulations do not cover the entire market.

“Decree 10 does not stipulate the issuance of certificates for all construction works used for residential purposes on commercial and service land,” Chau said. “Therefore, the scope is very narrow, only regulating issuance for construction works used for tourist accommodation purposes according to the provisions of the law on tourism, and leaving a large portion of condotels outside the scope of regulation.”

Nguyen Chi Thanh, vice chairman of the Vietnam Real Estate Association of Realtors, said that condotels, resort villas, and officetels were not recognised as residential units because they are not accompanied by other necessary facilities such as education and healthcare services.

“Therefore, it is necessary to continue to improve legal regulations for resort real estate to ensure the proper development of the tourism industry, as well as to develop a stable real estate market, and create belief for investors,” Thanh said.

According to the HoREA, by the end of 2022, for condotels alone, the country had about 83,000 units waiting for a pink book, most of which belonged to tourist resorts, using commercial and service land for terms of 50-70 years.

Buyers of condotels, officetels to get ownership certificates Ownership certificates will be granted to buyers of condotels, officetels, resort villas and other properties which are built on commercial and services land and used for accommodation and tourism purposes.

Condotels have not been forgotten Despite some unresolved issues, the licence to grant ownership rights for resort and condotel property investments has fulfilled investors' hopes after decades of waiting.

Condotels, officetels get ownership certificates from May 20 Owners of condotel apartments who fully satisfy the conditions under the land law, construction law and the law on real estate business shall be granted a certificate of ownership of land-attached construction facilities according to the commercial or service land area purpose.