There is a shortage of lands for technological and social infrastructures in Ho Chi Minh City, but many sites, houses and even villas in town have been abandoned for years.
Many cultivated lands are left fallow alongside Nguyen Van Linh Boulevard in District 7.
There are many abandoned villas covered by wild grass and creeper in the residential zone Khang An in District 9. Each villa with an area of hundreds of square meters is worth around VND4.5 billion (US$225,000), but has no residents.
Hundreds of villas without decorations and furniture in some new urban zones including An Suong and Vinh Loc are left in a similar condition.
Property brokers said owners had bought the villas in an attempt to wait for profit-taking opportunities from surging prices. They also added that the villas were worth billions of dong as they are located in HCMC’s town planning zones.
Many owners of the villas are from other provinces, so they just try to speculate on the properties and do not care about the condition, leaving those places becoming trash sites.
Work on some property projects in District 8 and Go Vap Districts, which has been delayed for long time, also turned the construction sites into garbage areas, causing environmental pollutions.
“Locals were informed that a school would be built on the site. But it turns out to be a garbage area,” said Mai Huu Nguyen, a resident living next to the land that has been cleared and abandoned for five years.
According to the city’s town planning by 2025, a huge infrastructure will be built to connect HCMC with adjacent provinces. However, the southern hub’s construction management failed to catch up with the urbanization, experts said, adding abandoned land problem came from the property speculation.
“Booming property market encouraged many investors to jump in four years ago. But they cannot sell their properties now as the prices plunged due to a frozen market. Most of them have to leave their assets abandoned to wait for the market to rally again,” said Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the HCMC Real Estate Association.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has suggested creating a state-owned land fund for public buildings, resettlement packages and to regulate the real estate market, according to Thanh Nien Newspaper.
The proposal will help strengthen the management of public land in Ho Chi Minh City, which has been left loose for many years.
The city's Department of Natural Resources and Environment says 1,520 hectares of public land have been abandoned, used for the wrong purposes, transferred, or hired out illegally.
Many state-owned and private companies have received more than 3,160 hectares for different kinds of projects in the city but have left it too late for implementation.
Those areas should become grounds for schools, hospitals or social houses.
However, it's hard for the government to revoke the land. City officials have many times threatened to cancel these projects and take back the land, but are asked for more time with one excuse or the other.
