The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment has recently issued an invitation to consulting firms to appraise the land prices of the ZeitGeist City Nhon Duc – Phuoc Kien New Urban Area project (Nhon Duc District, also known as ZeitGeist City Nha Be).
The ZeitGeist City Nha Be project is located in Phuoc Kien and Nhon Duc communes, Nha Be District, covering an area of 350 hectares. It is developed by GS Nha Be Development Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of GS E&C Group from South Korea.
This is the 7th time the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment has invited consulting firms to re-appraise the land prices of this project. The land price appraisal was originally conducted in December 2013. However, after almost 4 years, the Department has not been able to re-appraise the land prices of this project as instructed by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee.
The ZeitGeist City Nha Be project started construction at the end of 2019 and is the second largest urban area in South Saigon, following the Phu My Hung Urban Area. Some housing units in certain areas of the project have been handed over to customers. However, the financial obligations regarding the land of the project developer have not yet been determined.
Some housing units in the ZeitGeist City Nha Be project have been handed over.
According to the plan, the ZeitGeist City Nha Be project has 228 hectares of internal land and 121 hectares of external land. Within the 228 hectares of internal land, there are 155 hectares of residential land, including 14,000 apartments, 2,480 villas, and 2,678 mixed-use houses.
In December 2014, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee approved the land use value of the ZeitGeist City Nha Be project to be 3.214 trillion VND. In April 2017, the State Audit recommended that the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee re-appraise the land prices of this project.
In March 2020, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee instructed the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to lead and coordinate with relevant units for determining the land prices of the project.
Currently, there are hundreds of real estate projects in Ho Chi Minh City that have been suspended for many years due to the inability to pay for land use, even though the developers are eager to fulfill their financial obligations. According to the statistics of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), among the more than 100 legally problematic projects in Ho Chi Minh City, a large proportion is stuck at the stage of calculating land use fees.
Previously, the calculation of land use fees was the responsibility of the Department of Finance under the Land Law 2003. However, since 2014, according to the Land Law 2013, this task has been assigned to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to plan specific land prices and carry out the determination of land prices.
Since then, most of the land use fee calculation files have been pending for many years without resolution or have been requested to provide additional information multiple times, going through various stages and places. The process of land price appraisal and determination of land use fees takes a lot of time, causing many apartment buildings in Ho Chi Minh City to have been handed over for many years but residents have not been granted the ownership certificates or causing real estate projects to “stand still”.
