Buying Property in Da Nang, Hoi An and Nha Trang: The 50-Year Certificate and the 30% Quota

Published on: August 24, 2026

Last verified: 24 August 2026. The Housing Law 2023, Land Law 2024 and their implementing decrees are recent and implementation practice is still developing. Confirm quota, project eligibility and procedure locally at the time of purchase.

Quick answer: A foreign individual in Vietnam does not buy land or freehold. You acquire a housing ownership certificate running up to 50 years, with one extension of up to 50 years available on application before expiry, inside a commercial housing project that has been specifically approved for sale to foreign buyers. Two quotas cap it: no more than 30 per cent of the apartments in any condominium building or block, and no more than 250 houses within a ward-equivalent area of 10,000 people. The Housing Law 2023 removed the old rule that foreign owners could only sell to Vietnamese buyers, which is the single biggest liquidity improvement. Since 1 July 2025 Vietnam has abolished the district tier and redrawn ward boundaries, so quota confirmation must be current, dated and obtained under the new structure.

Vietnam's central coast is the second most searched Vietnamese property region after Ho Chi Minh City, and the one where foreign buyers are most likely to misunderstand what they are buying. Not because the rules are hidden, but because the shape of the thing being sold has no equivalent in the markets most buyers come from.

You are not buying land. You are not buying freehold. You are buying a time-limited ownership right in a unit inside a specific approved project, subject to two quotas, in a country that redrew its entire administrative map in 2025. Every one of those clauses matters, and the last one has quietly changed how one of the quotas is calculated.

What a foreign buyer actually owns in Vietnam

Land in Vietnam is publicly owned and administered by the state. Nobody, Vietnamese or foreign, holds freehold title to land. What exists is land use rights, and Vietnamese citizens and entities hold them on terms that foreign individuals do not.

For a foreign individual, the instrument is a housing ownership certificate, and its defining feature is the term:

• Up to 50 years from the date the certificate is issued.
• One extension of up to 50 years, applied for at the provincial People's Committee ahead of expiry. The application should be made in advance of the expiry date, with the committee given a defined period to decide.
• A foreign individual married to a Vietnamese citizen may hold on the same footing as a citizen.
• Overseas Vietnamese who retained Vietnamese citizenship are treated as citizens under the Land Law 2024, a genuine improvement on the previous position.

The legal reset that governs all of this is recent. The Housing Law 2023 (Law No. 27/2023/QH15) and the Land Law 2024 (Law No. 31/2024/QH15) both took effect on 1 August 2024, with Decree 95/2024/ND-CP of 24 July 2024 providing the implementing detail. Anything you read that predates mid-2024 describes a different regime. Our Vietnam guide for foreign investors covers the national framework.

The single most consequential change in the 2023 law is that foreigners may now sell to other foreigners. Under the previous framework, a foreign owner's exit was limited to Vietnamese buyers, which crushed liquidity. That constraint is gone. What replaced it is a subtler one: your foreign buyer must also fit within the quota, and the remaining term transfers rather than restarting. A certificate with 31 years left is what you are actually offering.

The two quotas

30 per cent of a building

Foreign organisations and individuals may collectively own no more than 30 per cent of the total apartments in a condominium building. For complexes with multiple blocks sharing a common base, the 30 per cent applies to each block, so a developer cannot concentrate foreign ownership in one tower and average it across the site. The cap applies to mixed-use buildings as well.

The way this goes wrong is not dramatic. You pay the deposit, sign the sale and purchase agreement, wait for the tower to complete, and then discover that the building's foreign allocation filled before your paperwork reached the top of the queue. Your money is committed. Your name is not going on a certificate.

Practical defence: ask for written confirmation of current foreign quota usage in that specific building or block, dated, from the developer and ideally cross-checked with the local authority. Then re-confirm close to registration, because quota is allocated at the moment of registration, not at the moment of reservation.

250 houses per ward-equivalent area

For landed property, villas, townhouses and semi-detached houses, foreign owners may collectively hold no more than 250 houses within an area equivalent in population to a ward, with ward-equivalent defined for this purpose as a population of 10,000 people. Where only one housing project exists in such an area, foreign ownership is limited to 10 per cent of the houses in that project, subject to the overall 250 ceiling. Where several projects exist, ownership can be distributed across them but the total must stay within 250.

The 2025 wrinkle almost nobody mentions

Here is the part that matters for the central coast specifically, and that most guides written before mid-2025 cannot possibly reflect.

The 250-house quota has an administrative denominator. And on 1 July 2025, Vietnam eliminated the district tier of government entirely, moved to a two-tier model of province and commune, redrew commune and ward boundaries nationwide, and reduced 63 provinces and cities to 34 through mergers. Since 1 July 2025, first-time ownership certificates issue at commune level.

Two of those mergers hit this exact region:

• Da Nang City absorbed Quang Nam province, which means Hoi An now sits inside Da Nang City as an administrative matter.
• Khanh Hoa province absorbed Ninh Thuan, with Nha Trang as the provincial capital, and Nha Trang's own wards were reorganised into new units.

The consequence is practical rather than theoretical. A quota that is calculated by reference to a ward-equivalent area has just had its ward boundaries redrawn, and the authority that issues your certificate has changed level. None of this makes a purchase unsafe. It does mean that quota confirmation must be current and dated, obtained under the post-reform administrative structure, and not accepted on the basis of a developer's spreadsheet from 2024.

The restriction you cannot look up

Beyond the quotas, foreign purchase is only possible inside commercial housing projects that have been approved for sale to foreign buyers. Not every project is. And projects located in areas designated for national defence and security are excluded from foreign sale regardless of whether quota remains.

There is no public map of these areas that a buyer can search from abroad. Confirmation comes from provincial authorities and from the project's approval documentation. On a coastline with the strategic geography that Vietnam's central coast has, this is not an academic point. Our guide to military zones and permit regions explains why project-level exclusion is the hardest of these restrictions to verify independently, and why written confirmation is the only real protection.

Da Nang

Da Nang is the most institutionally developed foreign-buyer market on the central coast, and the one with real condominium stock, which is the only route that reliably works for a foreign individual.

Where buyers look. The My Khe and An Thuong strip in Ngu Hanh Son is the established expatriate and short-let district, walkable to the beach and dense with cafes and co-working. Son Tra runs up towards the peninsula with the view stock. Hai Chau is the central business district, which is where year-round rather than seasonal tenants live. The Han river corridor carries the newer high-rise supply.

What drives it. Da Nang has the airport, the IT park, international schools, hospital capacity and a growing services economy. That combination produces something the resort markets do not have: tenants in November.

The condotel question. Da Nang and Nha Trang both carry a large legacy of condotel stock, tourism-commercial units sold with rental promises during the 2016 to 2019 cycle. Decree 10 of 2023 addressed the certificate position for tourism-commercial units, but the important point for a foreign buyer is different. A condotel is often not residential housing in the legal sense, which means it may not be available to a foreign buyer as housing, and the certificate you receive may not be a housing ownership certificate at all. If someone offers you a beachfront "apartment" with a guaranteed yield attached, establish first which legal category it sits in.

Hoi An

Hoi An is where the gap between what buyers want and what the law permits is widest.

The Ancient Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a conservation regime. The building stock in and around the protected zone is governed by restoration rules rather than development rights: what can be changed, what materials may be used, what may be added. There is very little legal condominium stock, which removes the one route that works cleanly for foreign individuals.

That absence creates a market in structures. Foreign buyers in Hoi An routinely encounter long-lease villa arrangements, business-use structures, and proposals to hold in a Vietnamese person's name. The last of those is the one to walk away from, and our guide to buying in a local's name explains why the arrangement fails precisely when you need it.

Two genuine diligence items specific to Hoi An, quite apart from the legal structure. Flooding: the Thu Bon river floods the low town on a recurring basis, and the flood history of a specific street is a real and answerable question. Conservation compliance: an existing structure that was altered without approval inside a protected zone is a liability, not a bargain.

Since the 2025 merger, Hoi An is administered as part of Da Nang City, which is a change in the authority you are dealing with rather than a change in the heritage regime.

Nha Trang

Nha Trang is the biggest and most supply-heavy of the three, with the Tran Phu beachfront boulevard, An Vien to the south, Vinh Hoa to the north and the peninsula developments beyond.

Two things distinguish it from Da Nang as an investment proposition.

First, supply. Nha Trang absorbed a very large volume of condo and condotel construction, and heavy supply is a permanent feature of the resale conversation rather than a temporary condition.

Second, buyer concentration. Nha Trang's tourism and its investor base have historically been strongly weighted towards Russian and Chinese demand. A concentrated source market is fine while it is flowing and painful when it is not, and it shows up in exit liquidity rather than in the purchase price. When you model an exit, ask who the realistic buyer is.

Nha Trang's wards were among those reorganised in 2025, which brings you back to the quota-denominator point above.

Payment, foreign exchange and getting money out

The paperwork discipline here is what determines whether you can repatriate proceeds later, and it is far more important than most buyers realise at the time.

• Pay through the banking system, into the correct account type, with the payment reference identifying the project and the unit. Do not pay in cash and do not pay a third party.
• Keep the inbound remittance trail. Repatriation of sale proceeds depends on being able to document that the funds came in through official channels in the first place.
• Off-plan payment schedules are capped by law, and developers of off-plan housing are required to provide a bank guarantee. Ask to see the guarantee, not a reference to it.
• Budget the transaction taxes. Registration fee, VAT on new-build, personal income tax on transfer for individuals, the building maintenance fund (a percentage of unit value paid on handover), and ongoing management fees. Our guide to transferring money abroad to buy property covers the currency side.

City comparison

Due diligence checklist for the central coast

1. Is the project approved for sale to foreign buyers? Written confirmation, dated, from the developer, with the approval documentation attached.
2. Is the project outside any national defence or security designated area? Ask the question explicitly and in writing.
3. What is the current foreign quota usage in that building or block, and is there written confirmation dated close to the intended registration?
4. For landed property, what is the 250-house position in the ward-equivalent area, calculated under the post-July-2025 administrative boundaries?
5. Is the unit legally residential housing, or is it a tourism-commercial or condotel unit?
6. What term will the certificate carry, from what date, and what is the extension procedure and deadline?
7. Is there a bank guarantee for the off-plan purchase, and can you see it?
8. What are the maintenance fund and management fees, and what do they cover?
9. Who is the realistic resale buyer, and does the quota position allow a foreign buyer to acquire from you?
10. Independent Vietnamese counsel, instructed by you, not introduced by the developer. Our guide on hiring a real estate lawyer abroad covers how to structure that.

Frequently asked questions

What happens at the end of the 50 years?
You apply to the provincial People's Committee ahead of expiry for an extension of up to a further 50 years. The mechanism exists in the law. Since the current framework only took effect in 2024, there is not yet a long body of practice on renewals at scale under it, so treat the extension as a right that must be exercised on time rather than as an automatic rollover, and calendar the deadline the day you receive the certificate.

Can I buy land or a house outside a project?
Foreign individuals cannot acquire land use rights in the way Vietnamese citizens can, and purchases are confined to approved commercial housing projects. Standalone houses and land outside such projects are not available on the same basis, which is why so much of what foreign buyers are shown in places like Hoi An is a structure rather than an ownership.

Is a condotel a good way in?
It is a different asset class from residential housing, with a different certificate position, a different legal category and a rental promise that is only as good as the operator. Establish the legal classification before the yield.

Does buying property in Vietnam give me a visa?
No. Vietnam does not grant residence on the basis of a property purchase. Property and immigration are separate.

Do I have to sell to a Vietnamese buyer?
No, and this is the biggest improvement in the current law. You may sell to another foreigner, provided that buyer is eligible and quota is available, and provided the remaining term is what you are transferring.

How did the 2025 provincial mergers affect existing owners?
The substantive property rules did not change. What changed is administrative: the district tier was abolished, wards and communes were redrawn, certificate issuance moved to commune level, and provinces merged, so the authority names and boundaries in older documentation may no longer match current administration. Anyone holding or buying should work from current administrative references rather than pre-2025 ones.

Keep reading on JanusHermes

On Vietnam's central coast the decisive documents are not the brochure and the price list. They are the project's foreign-sale approval and a dated quota confirmation, obtained under the post-2025 administrative structure. Everything else follows from those two. JanusHermes lists property from local agencies in 11 languages, with the local agency's own contact details on every listing.

On Vietnam, see the country guide for foreign investors. On the structural questions, read leasehold versus freehold, restricted regions for foreign buyers, nominee ownership and what happens to your property if you lose residency.

This article is general information about Vietnamese property law as it applies to foreign buyers, current as at August 2026. It is not legal, tax or investment advice. The Housing Law 2023, Land Law 2024 and their implementing decrees are recent, implementation practice is still developing, and Vietnam's administrative structure was substantially reorganised in 2025, so quota calculations, authority names and procedures should be verified locally at the time of purchase. Always obtain written advice from a qualified Vietnamese lawyer, instructed independently of the developer and the agent, before committing funds.