Buying off-plan with a loan: the 5%, 30%, 70% and 95% rules

Buying a flat that has not been built yet is the normal way to buy a new apartment in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It is also the purchase where the buyer carries the most risk for the longest time: money is paid over two or three years for something that exists only as a foundation and a sales brochure. Vietnamese law answers that risk with a small number of hard caps and one guarantee. Knowing them is the difference between a buyer who is protected and one who merely believes they are.

Which law, and since when

Off-plan sales are governed by the Law on Real Estate Business No. 29/2023/QH15 and the Housing Law No. 27/2023/QH15. Both were originally due to take effect on 1 January 2025. Law No. 43/2024/QH15 brought them forward to 1 August 2024, so material that still cites the 2025 date is out of date. Contracts signed under the previous 2014 law before that date continue to follow the old rules.

The four numbers in the law

On a 3.5 billion dong apartment, these are the most the developer may lawfully collect at each stage.

Three details in those articles are routinely misunderstood.

• The deposit counts inside the 30%. Under the 2014 law it sat on top. A developer asking for 5% to reserve and then 30% at contract is asking for more than the current law allows.
• No lawful deposit before the project is eligible for sale. Article 23 allows a deposit only once the unit meets every legal condition for sale. A “booking fee” or “expression of interest” taken earlier, often by a broker, is outside the law’s protection, and Article 23(4) forbids the developer from authorising anyone else to sign deposit or sale contracts in the first place.
• The last 5% is the buyer’s leverage. It is paid only when the ownership certificate, the “sổ hồng”, has been issued. The developer must file the application within 50 days of handover unless the buyer chooses to do it themselves (Article 17(3)).

Before selling at all, the developer must have started construction, hold the land papers and a building permit, have completed the foundations for an apartment building, and have received written confirmation from the provincial housing authority that the units are eligible for sale (Article 24). That confirmation is a document you can ask to see.

The bank guarantee, and the box you should not tick

Article 26 requires every developer selling off-plan to have a bank guarantee covering its obligation to refund buyers if it fails to hand over on the date in the contract. The mechanics are set out in the State Bank’s Circular 61/2024/TT-NHNN, in force since 1 April 2025.

1. The bank signs a guarantee agreement with the developer and issues a commitment to guarantee every buyer in the project. That commitment is not your guarantee.
2. Your guarantee is an individual letter issued in your name. The developer must deliver it within ten working days of signing, and may not take any payment from you until you have received it.
3. If the developer fails to hand over and does not refund you, you present the letter and the bank must pay in its place. The letter remains valid until at least 30 days after the developer’s refund deadline.

Two limits matter. The guarantee covers only money paid after you received the letter, and the bank may refuse to pay any amount you paid beyond the caps in the table above. Paying early or paying extra, however politely requested, falls outside the guarantee.

And the law allows the buyer to waive the guarantee in writing at signing (Article 26(3)). A waiver clause can be one line in a long contract. Do not sign it.

How the loan is secured before the flat exists

The Housing Law allows a buyer to mortgage an off-plan home, but only to a credit institution, and only with a signed sale contract, proof of the payments made so far and no dispute over the contract (Articles 183 and 184). In practice most banks take a mortgage over the rights arising from the sale contract rather than over the future flat itself. When the flat is handed over and the certificate issued, the registration is carried over to a mortgage of the finished home with the same bank.

The money is released in tranches that follow the developer’s payment calls, paid directly to the developer, and usually only after the buyer has paid their own share first. Many projects also have a three-way agreement between buyer, developer and bank. No statute regulates its contents; read it as carefully as the sale contract, especially what happens to the loan if the sale is cancelled.

One common confusion: the 70% in the law is a cap on what the developer may collect before handover, not a cap on what the bank may lend. Neither the Law on Credit Institutions nor the State Bank’s lending circular sets a loan-to-value limit for home loans. Banks set their own, and for project loans they commonly advertise 70% to 80% of value.

What the timetable does to the cost

Take the 3.5 billion dong flat with a two-year build. The buyer pays the first 30% from savings. The bank then pays four tranches of 350 million at months 6, 12, 18 and 24, bringing the total to the 70% cap, and a further 875 million at handover. The buyer pays the last 5% when the certificate arrives. The loan is 2,275,000,000 dong, 65% of the price.

During construction the loan is usually interest-only. At 11.5% the interest on the growing balance between month 6 and handover comes to 120,750,000 dong. That cost appears on no brochure, because nothing has been delivered when it is paid.

At handover the full 2,275,000,000 dong starts repaying over twenty years. On equal principal at 11.5% the first instalment is 31,281,250 dong, and the total interest over the term is 2,627,151,042 dong. The household goes from paying interest on a part-drawn loan to paying principal and interest on the whole of it in one month, which is the cliff described in the grace period and the cliff at the end of it.

Developer interest support: who is really paying

Many projects advertise that the developer will pay the interest, or the interest above a certain rate, for 18 to 36 months, often combined with a principal grace period. The buyer sees no instalments until handover. Two things are true of every such scheme.

• It is priced in. Developers commonly offer a discount, reported in 2026 at 10% to 25%, to buyers who pay cash instead of taking the supported loan. The support is that discount, spent on the bank’s behalf.
• The loan is yours, not the developer’s. If the developer stops paying, the bank collects from the borrower.

This has happened at scale. In February 2023 a large developer stopped its interest support on several projects and asked buyers to pay the interest themselves, promising to reimburse them later. By mid-2024 VnExpress reported 307 buyers across three of those projects with loans of about 1,270 billion dong disbursed; around 100 of them had debts classified in groups 3 to 5, the bad-debt categories at the national credit bureau. Several said the bank had released money faster than construction progressed.

The protection is simple and unglamorous: before relying on support, check that you could pay the full instalment from the first month, and check that the bank’s drawdowns are tied to construction milestones rather than to dates.

After handover: waiting for the certificate

Certificate delays are not rare. In Ho Chi Minh City, a city task force had cleared the obstacles to certificates at 274 of 373 problem projects by the end of August 2026, covering 189,332 homes. In 99 projects, 39,913 homes still had none. Until the certificate is issued the bank holds a mortgage over contract rights rather than over a titled home, which can make refinancing or selling harder. The 5% you still hold is the main reason the developer has to finish the paperwork.

A change is coming

A draft amendment to the Law on Real Estate Business is before the National Assembly in late 2026, with most provisions reported to take effect on 1 July 2027 if passed. As published, it would move the 30% and 70% caps out of the law and into a decree, keep the 95% cap, and put the final 5% into a blocked bank account until the certificate is issued instead of leaving it with the buyer. This guide will be revised when the final text is adopted; until then, the caps above are the law.

Before you sign an off-plan contract

1. Ask to see the housing authority’s written confirmation that the units are eligible for sale.
2. Pay nothing until you hold an individual guarantee letter in your name.
3. Refuse any clause waiving the guarantee.
4. Check the payment schedule against 30%, 70% and 95%, with the deposit inside the 30%.
5. Make every payment by bank transfer to the developer’s account, as Article 48 requires.
6. Price the loan as if the developer’s interest support did not exist, in the loan inspector, with a grace period equal to the build time.