Guidance On Issuance Of Title Certificate For Condotel In Vietnam

In February 2020, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) issued a long-waited guideline regarding issuance Certificate of Land Use Rights, Ownership of Residential Houses and Assets attached to land (LURCs) for some new real estate products including condotel and resort villas. In particular, the MONRE confirms three important points below:

  • Condotel (condo-hotel) and resort villas are regarded as tourism residences (such as tourism appartment and tourism villas) under the Law on Tourism. Accordingly, the land used for the development of these facilities for service provision purposes is categorized as “commercial and services land”. The confirmation by MONRE is consistent with our earlier as discussed here.

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In

Coronavirus outbreak - Definition of Force Majeure Events under Vietnamese law

In the last few months, the Coronavirus (Covid 19) outbreak has adversely affected the health and lives of millions of Vietnamese people and billions of people all over the planet. The outbreak also hurts the commercial life of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese companies. Inevitably, parties to commercial contracts will now have to consider whether they can be exempt from liabilities on the ground of force majeure if they cannot perform contracts due to Coronavirus outbreak.

In a series of posts, we will now discuss the force majeure regime under Vietnamese law and its connection with Coronavirus outbreak. The first post will address how a force majeure event is defined under Vietnamese law and whether the coronavirus outbreak could qualify as a force majeure event. This post is written by Nguyen Quang Vu and Tran Thuy Tien.

In summary,

  • On its face, the definition of force majeure event under Vietnamese law contains three usual elements of a force majeure event which are objectivity, unforeseeability, and irresistibility. However, it is not clear if the coronavirus outbreak could satisfy all the elements of a force majeure event under the Civil Code 2015.

  • In Vietnamese, “objectivity” (khách quan) means (1) something which cannot be controlled by people’s mind, or (2) something which is based on factual events. Accordingly, a self-induced event may still qualify as an event, which occurs in an objective manner.

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In , ,

New guidance on registration of mortgage of land use right and construction works - Part 2

On 25 November 2019, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) issued Circular 7 guiding some contents of mortgage of land use right and asset attached to land (Circular 7/2019). Circular 7/2019 will take effect from 10 January 2020 and replace Joint Circular 9 of the MOJ and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) dated 23 June 2016 (Joint Circular 9/2016) on the same subject matter. In general, Circular 7/2019 only provides some guiding and supplementing provisions for Decree 102 of the Government dated 1 September 2017 (Decree 102/2017) rather than providing detailed guidance as Joint Circular 9/2016.

Registration that must be completed before the registration of mortgage of land use right and construction works

Circular 7/2019 regulates that following kinds of registration of change to land and/or asset attached to land or confirmation of change must be completed before a person can register a mortgage of land use right and construction works:

(i) the information relating to land parcel or land parcel area is inconsistent with the information on the Certificate due to land consolidation, measurement or re-determination of land area/size; and

(ii) the information relating to asset attached to land certified on the Certificate (including kind of house, name of building, number of floors, building area, use area) is inconsistent with the information on the new Certificate due to measurement or re-determination of area, construction, or repair.

In the past, if there is change in (i) above, such change can be registered at the same time with the mortgage registration.

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Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In ,