'Mountain' of red books in banks: Two names revealed 'holding' 5 million billion VND of mortgaged real estate

Collateral for customer loans is quite diverse, of which real estate is still the most popular. There are two banks that hold a total of nearly 5 million billion VND in real estate collateral.

A real estate project on Vo Nguyen Giap Street, Ho Chi Minh City - Photo: QUANG DINH

Banks with large mortgage properties

Semi-annual financial reports for 2025 at many banks do not explain in detail the items of valuable papers received as mortgages and pledges.

Among the remaining, there are some notable big names such as Agribank , Vietcombank...

The explanation shows that the total value of mortgaged and pledged assets of customers at Agribank has nearly reached 3.53 million billion VND at the end of June 2025, an increase of more than 10% after 6 months.

Of which, real estate is still the main collateral asset at this bank, reaching more than 3.17 trillion VND, an increase of more than 8% compared to the end of last year. Meanwhile, real estate and valuable papers account for 200,271 billion VND and 85,559 billion VND respectively.

In terms of total value of mortgaged assets, Agribank may not surpass some banks in the "Big 4" group. However, if we only consider real estate mortgaged assets, Agribank may not have any "rivals".

As for Vietcombank , total mortgaged assets as of June 30, 2025 were more than VND2,600 trillion, up nearly 10% compared to the end of last year. Of which, real estate accounted for more than VND1,738 trillion, a slight increase compared to VND1,732 trillion 6 months ago.

The total amount of real estate collateral from customers at Agribank and Vietcombank is nearly 5 million billion VND. Some remaining state-owned banks did not explain this amount in detail.

In the group of joint stock commercial banks:ACB , MBBank, Techcombank, Sacombank, HDBank... all have a relatively high proportion of real estate mortgaged assets. For example, Techcombank "held" 565,888 billion VND at the end of June 2025, an increase of nearly 6% compared to the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, Sacombank held 889,289 billion VND in real estate mortgaged assets, an increase of 6.5%.

On the contrary, ACB has a tendency to decrease from more than 1.05 trillion VND to 997,618 billion VND after the first 6 months of this year.

Credit also flows strongly into real estate.

According to data from the State Bank as of July 31, the total outstanding debt for the real estate sector of credit institutions reached 4.08 million billion VND. An impressive growth rate of 16.95% compared to the end of 2024, higher than the general credit growth rate of the economy. Real estate credit currently accounts for 23.68% of the total outstanding debt of the entire economy.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Hanh - Director of SHS Securities Analysis Center - SHS Research - said that in policy making, everyone hopes that bank capital will flow into production, which creates jobs and material wealth for the economy.

Looking at data from the financial reports of joint stock commercial banks, the trend is even clearer: in just 6 months, real estate business loans increased by nearly 20%, much higher than those for processing industry or trade.

According to SHS Research experts, valuing and appraising a real estate project is often much easier than a factory project. Land and buildings can be mortgaged and liquidated at a stable value, while machinery and equipment lose value quickly and their output is unclear.

"It's easy to see that money is 'looking for a place to show its worth' and at this time, real estate has become the place to receive it. But the real estate credit cycle is very slow.

Home loans and project loans usually last 10-20 years; capital stays in fixed assets, difficult to rotate. Meanwhile, capital loans for production and business rotate quickly, each year through many cycles, creating a direct push for GDP," SHS experts pointed out.

Data from SHS also shows that from 2021 to now, real estate has been a big "capital attractor": since the beginning of the year, for every 100 VND of additional credit, about 35 VND has been allocated to this sector.

If from the end of 2022, an average of nearly 30 VND/100 goes into this field (about 20 VND for project development enterprises, 10 VND for loans to buy - self-use). This reflects the supply - demand: the supply side is "reinforced" through restructuring and debt settlement, while the housing demand side has not recovered evenly, so it is easy to create a "fixed price - thin liquidity" situation if there is no additional income pull.

SHS experts believe that the core issue is not whether real estate overwhelms the production and business sector, but how to make the entire economic pie expand, so that production has a place to live and is strong enough to attract capital flows.

If we want the cash flow to spread to production and services, we need more policies to stimulate real demand (employment, income, social housing with infrastructure) instead of just "supply and structure" on the supply side.

BINH KHANH

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nui-so-do-o-ngan-hang-lo-dien-hai-cai-ten-om-5-trieu-ti-dong-bat-dong-san-the-chap-20251001194751384.htm