Social housing loans in 2026: three schemes, three different rates

For a household that qualifies, a social housing loan is the cheapest home finance in Vietnam by a wide margin. It is also the most frequently misdescribed: the rate quoted in a news article may belong to a different scheme, a different half-year, or a scheme whose money has run out. There are three channels, and they work quite differently.

The three channels at a glance

The Social Policy Bank: 5.4%, if there is money

Lending by the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies is governed by Article 48 of Decree 100/2024/NĐ-CP, as amended. Since 10 October 2025 the rate has been 5.4% a year, written into the decree itself by the amending Decree 261/2025/NĐ-CP. It replaced the 6.6% that applied from August 2024, and the bank applied the cut to loans already outstanding as well as to new ones.

• Up to 80% of the purchase or lease-purchase contract value.
• A term agreed with the bank, up to 25 years from first disbursement.
• The home being bought is the collateral, under a three-party agreement with the developer.
• Overdue principal is charged at 130% of the loan rate.

The constraint is not the rate but the capital. This lending is funded from an annual allocation of the state budget. For 2026 the allocation was 6,305 billion dong; by 25 September 81% had been disbursed and the bank reported its plan for the year fully used, while provinces had asked for 12,655 billion. When a local quota is exhausted, new applications wait for the next allocation, and where demand exceeds it priority groups go first.

The Resolution 33 programme: two points under the big banks

Government Resolution 33/NQ-CP of March 2023 launched what was first called the 120,000 billion package, lent from the four large state-owned banks’ own funds. It has since grown: by the State Bank’s briefing of October 2026, eleven banks had registered more than 153,000 billion dong.

The rate is not fixed. Every six months the State Bank announces it, set at about two percentage points below the average medium and long-term lending rate of the four state banks. The buyer gets that rate for five years, after which the bank’s ordinary rate applies. Because it tracks the market, it fell for three years and rose for the first time in July 2026.

Uptake has been slow. By the end of August 2026 about 17,500 billion dong had been disbursed, around a tenth of the programme, and most of that went to developers rather than buyers. The reasons given by the State Bank and the press are consistent: too few projects with complete legal papers, and buyers wary of what the rate becomes after five years.

The under-35 scheme: fifteen years instead of five

Since 31 May 2025, under Government Resolutions 46/NQ-CP and 77/NQ-CP, buyers aged under 35 purchasing social housing can borrow from nine participating banks on a longer preferential path: two points below the four-bank average for the first five years, and one point below for the next ten. From 1 July 2026 that is 6.5% and then 7.5%. Like the main programme, the figures reset every half-year.

This scheme is for social housing only. The youth packages several banks launched in 2025 for commercial homes are ordinary products with a short fixed period, and several have since been withdrawn or replaced.

What each one costs on the same flat

Take a social housing apartment at 1.2 billion dong, borrowing the maximum 80%, so 960,000,000 dong, over 25 years on equal principal. For the two commercial-bank schemes the rate after the preferential period is not known; the figures below assume 11.5%, the floating rate used across this site. The preferential rates are assumed to stay at their October 2026 levels, which they will not exactly do.

The headline rates differ by 1.1 points. The total interest differs by more than half a billion dong, almost all of it from what happens after year five. On the Resolution 33 loan, the instalment in month 61 is 43% higher than in month 60: the same thirteenth-month problem, simply moved to the sixtieth month. On the under-35 path the step comes so late, on such a small balance, that it barely matters.

Against the income ceiling for a single buyer of 25 million dong a month, a first instalment of 7.52 million is 30% of income and 8.4 million is 34%. Both sit inside the bands discussed in how much can you actually borrow, but only if the 43% step in year six is affordable too.

Who qualifies

Eligibility for social housing itself is set by Decree 100/2024 as amended three times in six months. The current income ceilings, from 7 April 2026 under Decree 136/2026/NĐ-CP, are average take-home income over the previous twelve months of:

• 25 million dong a month for a single person;
• 35 million for a single parent raising a minor child;
• 50 million combined for a married couple.

Provinces may apply a coefficient to these figures. There is also a housing condition: the buyer and spouse must own no home in the province where the project is, or own one with less than 15 square metres of floor area per person. Older articles quoting ceilings of 15 and 30 million describe the rules before October 2025.

Selling it later

Under Article 89 of the Housing Law 2023, within five years of paying in full a social housing unit may be sold only to the developer or to another eligible buyer, at no more than the original price. After five years, once the ownership certificate is issued, it may be sold at market price; for an apartment no land-use fee is due, while a house requires the seller to pay half the land-use fee. A draft amendment to the Housing Law before the National Assembly in late 2026 would tighten this, so check the rule in force when you sign.

Before applying

1. Ask which of the three channels the project’s loans come through.
2. For the Social Policy Bank, ask the local branch whether this year’s quota has capital left.
3. For a commercial-bank scheme, get the post-preferential formula in writing, and run the loan in the loan inspector with the promotional period set to 60 months.
4. Check the rate announced for the coming half-year, published each June and December.