Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Government Decree No 44/2022/ND-CP about thedevelopment, management and use of the information system about housing andreal estate is expected to improve the transparency of the property market.

The Law on Real Estate Business 2014 and Decree No 117/2015/ND-CP alreadyregulate the publication of information on real estate projects for sale withfines for violations.

However, the published information about the legality of projects remainedhalf-opened, making it easier to sell products while punishments remained toolight.

Lawer Nguyen Thanh Ha, chairman of SBLaw, said that people could find projectinformation about planning and land use plans at portals of districts,provinces, and cities where the projects were located for the information.However, the information was sketchy and not in full.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, only 337 out of 704district People’s Committees nationwide published the district-level land plansin 2021, accounting for 47.9%.

In addition, the information dissemination by district People’s Committeeslacked synchronisation and remained dispersed, making it difficult forresidents to search for information adequately. Only 17 per cent publisheddistrict-level land use plans adequately.

Ha said that the existing regulations required developers to make public legalinformation about projects, however, most were advertising without importantlegal documents such as construction permits and 1-500 scale planning.

Lawyer Bui Quang Tin from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, it wasimportant to have a unified and centralised form of information disclosure forpeople to easily access.

Even the introduction of heavy punishments for not fully disclosing legaldocuments of projects, such as forcing a business stoppage for 12-24 monthswould not be as effective as the measure of centralising documents to anagency, such as the Department of Construction, and requiring this agency todisclose information.

Now that most homebuyers had good access to information thanks to technology, aunified agency to disclose project information would help improve transparency.

Under Decree No 44/2022/ND-CP, Vietnam will develop a database about the realestate market, including information on the country-level, local–level,project–level, transactions and market statistics.

The country and local-level database include legal documents, projectinformation and transactions, tax data, real estate broker certificates,outstanding loans, foreign direct investment in real estate and bond issuanceof real estate enterprises.

The project-level database includes general information, licenses, types ofreal estate projects, transactions, prices and inventories.

The database can be accessed at batdongsan.xaydung.gov.vn. The housing and realestate market information system will be managed by the Ministry ofConstruction and local departments of constructions./.