In the Land Law 2024 (effective from January 1, 2025) approved by the National Assembly, the new change that received a lot of attention is the detail of expanding land use rights for Vietnamese overseas.
Specifically, clause 3 and clause 6, Article 4 on “Land users” stipulate that land users are assigned land, leased land, recognized land use rights; currently using stable land, meeting the conditions for granting land use right certificates, ownership rights assets attached to land that have not been granted land use right certificates by the state include: individuals in the country, Vietnamese people residing abroad as Vietnamese citizens; Vietnamese origin residing abroad.
Real estate market “hot” when Vietnamese overseas can buy houses next year?
Troy Griffiths – Deputy Managing Director of Savills Vietnam – believes that this change will bring more investment opportunities for the group of Vietnamese overseas real estate buyers.
“This change also creates great potential for the market thanks to direct investment capital from Vietnamese overseas. In the past, Vietnamese people abroad who wanted to invest in Vietnam had to go through relatives or relatives, so this led to some unnecessary disputes. The new law will solve this problem, creating more favorable conditions for investment and minimizing the risk of disputes between parties in the investment process,” said Troy Griffiths.
An in-depth analysis of the portrait of this buyer group, the specialist said Savills had the opportunity to cooperate with many Vietnamese people abroad. One of the main points is that currently most of them are elderly. They may be people who have emigrated abroad, after many years of hard work, they have owned a certain amount of assets and are considering investing in Vietnam, even considering returning.
“It is also worth noting that there are many Vietnamese people working abroad, not only overseas Vietnamese but also those working abroad. This creates a huge potential investor source,” Troy analyzed.
According to the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese, the amount of remittances to Vietnam from overseas Vietnamese from 1993 (the first year of remittance statistics) to the end of 2022 reached over 190 billion USD, almost equal to the disbursed FDI capital in the same period. The record remittance source of USD 19 billion in 2022 alone has put Vietnam in the top 10 countries receiving the largest remittances from abroad.
“From the above figures, it can be seen that this is a very important source of capital for Vietnam. The question is how that capital will be used when it comes to Vietnam? This is quite interesting because it has a slight fluctuation according to the exchange rate. Of course, if it is sent from the US, a strong USD means a higher purchasing power in Vietnam. Most of the remittances come from Asian countries through migrant workers. Quite a few of these funds have flowed into real estate,” Troy analyzed.
The demand for remittances in the real estate sector has been recognized. According to a 2016 statistics from the Central Institute for Economic Management, about 15-20% of remittances are directly invested in real estate. If calculated quickly, this number t
