Ministry of Construction removes mandatory regulation for real estate transactions through trading floors: Controversy continues

Nearly a year ago, in the draft of the Law on Real Estate Business (amended), the Ministry of Construction proposed that all real estate transactions must go through the floors. However, this proposal received many objections, because forcing transactions through the floors would cause real estate prices to increase by 2% - 8%.

Therefore, recently, the Ministry of Construction has removed this proposal, replacing "mandatory" transactions through the floor with "encouraging" transactions through the floor.

The Ministry of Construction has issued a set of regulations requiring real estate transactions through the stock exchange to continue the debate. Image 1 — Illustration photo. (Source: DXX)

Specifically, Clause 7, Article 7 of the Draft Law on Real Estate Business (amended) stipulates: The State encourages organizations and individuals to conduct transactions of buying, selling, transferring, leasing, leasing houses, construction works and land use rights through real estate trading floors.

However, this proposal continues to receive mixed opinions. Some opinions say that the new proposal of the Ministry of Construction could put real estate trading floor owners in a very difficult situation.

Meanwhile, Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, agreed with the proposal of the Ministry of Construction. Mr. Chau said that the real estate trading floor is an intermediary organization connecting supply and demand, connecting investors, real estate owners with customers, home buyers and is an indispensable unit for the market.

However, the Draft Law on Real Estate Business (amended) stipulates that real estate transactions must only be "encouraged" but not required to go through real estate trading floors, which will not result in real estate trading floors losing their jobs or "brokers" becoming unemployed.

Mr. Chau explained: In the 8 years of implementing the 2014 Real Estate Business Law, the regulation that real estate transactions are not required to go through real estate trading floors has not hindered the operations of real estate trading floors.

“In fact, real estate trading floors have only encountered difficulties since 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and because the real estate market has been very difficult in the past 3 years,” Mr. Chau emphasized.

Mr. Chau continued to cite that in the US, regulations do not require real estate transactions to be conducted through brokers or brokerage offices. However, up to 99% of real estate transactions are conducted through brokerage organizations and individuals.

The reason is that real estate brokers in the US are of good quality and qualifications. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, currently, untrained brokers account for a very large proportion, even overwhelmingly compared to trained brokers.

Therefore, the Chairman of HoREA suggested that when drafting a Decree detailing the implementation of the Law on Real Estate Business, the Ministry of Construction should pay special attention to training, practicing real estate brokerage, testing, granting certificates of completion of courses, and granting practice certificates to real estate brokers.

“This action can overcome the situation where only about 10% of the total of more than 300,000 brokers are granted practice certificates and have only been trained with a rather thin program, to improve the quality of the real estate brokerage team similar to the training model, granting practice certificates to notaries or price appraisers,” Mr. Chau emphasized.

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