In recent years, the real estate market in Ho Chi Minh City is gradually becoming active, appearing a series of businesses belonging to the group of real estate business activities with capital scale up to billions of USD. Accordingly, the projects that businesses often focus on investment are apartment projects. Therefore, besides building, researching and developing projects, the issue that businesses are interested in is compliance with the law, and one of the legal procedures that project investors need to follow is the procedure for obtaining a unit numbering. However, it seems that the procedure is simple and easy to follow, but when starting to implement the investors often face a lot of difficulties, it takes a lot of time to implement.
The main reason is that currently the provisions on issuing units numbering certificates have not been clearly defined. Specifically:
Firstly, about the dossier component
Under Article 20 of Decision 22/2012 the numbering and issuance of units numbering certificates are required in the following case:
- Housing, construction, or unbuilt land in the area that has been numbered, but the owner of the house, construction work or land user has a request for the house numbering due to new construction; detached – merge into houses or build more houses on the same campus;
- Houses and construction have a stable unit numbering, but the owner (user) requires a unit numbering Certificate to carry out related transactions of houses and constructions;
- Organizations and individuals that request to submit a Unit numbering registration application (attach relevant documents) to the district People’s Committee for a new unit numbering.
As such, the components of the dossier to be submitted to apply for the unit numbering certificate include:
- Unit numbering registration application;
- Relevant documents.
According to Official Letter No. 6278 / SXD-QLN & CS, the current issue of unit numbering and the issuance of a unit numbering certificate as required by Decision No. 22/2012 is not an administrative procedure. Decision No. 22/2012 also does not include any form and does not specify the details of the relevant documents to provide, including documents or papers.
Official Letter No. 6278 / SXD-QLN & CS guiding, although, the issue of a unit numbering and granting of unit numbering certificate is no longer an administrative procedure, but each District People’s Committee will build a specific process to control, manage, maintain dossiers, and deal with files logically at the request of organizations and individuals. As such, the records will depend on the internal workflow of each district People’s Committee. However, the composition of detailed dossiers is not publicly available by the People’s Committees.
Therefore, when the investor carries out the procedure for a unit numbering certificate, the investor must go to the People’s Committee of the district where the project is built to ask for guidance and the investor is often unable to prepare documents for the first submission adequately, resulting in additional reports and extending the time of a unit numbering certificate.
Based on the reality dossier, the documents required by the People’s Committee are the Application for obtaining a unit numbering, attached to the List of the unit numbering and the drawings of the floors showing the location of the apartment as prescribed; The latest updated floor plans up to the date of Application for unit numbering appraised by the Department of Construction; Minutes of construction work inspection; Notify the result of an investigation of the pre-acceptance test of works completion by the State Expertise Department on the quality of construction works; Minutes of construction work inspection by Department of Construction Inspectorate certified by Ward People’s Committee; And some other related documents.
Second, on the process and time of processing dossiers
According to Official Letter No. 6278 / SXD-QLN & CS, the time for People’s Committees of districts to process dossiers must be no later than the time specified in Decision No. 1958/1998 / QD- UB-QLĐT of the City People’s Committee, specifically not later than ten days. However, as stated above, the current issuance of the required unit numbering certificates is not an administrative procedure. Therefore, often the District People’s Committee will not receive dossier at the one-stop service department, nor will it issue any Receipt with recording the appointment date for results and ensuring compliance with time. Processing time is no more than ten working days, as mentioned above. Therefore, the actual processing time is extended or fast, depending on the processing progress of the People’s Committee of the district and often ten days later than prescribed.
One of the consequences of the delay in issuing unit numbering certificates leads to the extension of the time to apply for house ownership certificates for owners to buy apartments, challenging to find apartments and cause difficulties in managing administrative of the Investor
Third, on handling violations
According to the provisions of Decision 22/2012 / QD-UBND, organizations and individuals are not allowed to arbitrarily set the unit numbering, change the unit numbering, or hang the unit plates against the regulations. Violating organizations and individuals must be handled according to the provisions of law.
And Decision 05/2006 / QD-BXD specifies that organizations and individuals must not use unit plates in contravention of regulations and must not allow units to lack number plates. In case the unit has a signboard and the address is different from the unit plate being hung as prescribed, the signboard must be amended accordingly. Those who commit acts of violation shall, depending on the seriousness of the offences, be administratively sanctioned. If causing damage to others, they must pay compensation to the victims according to civil law.
However, at present, there are not any legal provisions on sanctions for administrative violations in this matter.
If you have any questions or require any additional information, please contact Apolat Legal – An International Law Firm in Viet Nam.
This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for legal advice.
