Vietnam joins elite group of nations advancing real estate market openness

Vietnam ranked 50th out of 88 nations and territories in JLL’s latest global real estate transparency survey, earning a score of 3.15 and a place in the ‘Semi-Transparent’ category. More striking is the company the country keeps: Vietnam is one of just 10 markets worldwide recognized for the strongest transparency improvements between 2024 and 2026, alongside Poland, Thailand, Australia, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, India, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

For ordinary Vietnamese families and foreign investors alike, that ranking reflects a market that has changed almost beyond recognition in a decade.

Before 2020, Vietnam carried a ‘Low Transparency’ designation, a label that signaled scarce market data and tangled legal frameworks that kept foreign property investors at arm’s length. A turning point came in 2016, when Vietnam joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership and began building a national real estate database. By 2020 the country had climbed to ‘Semi-Transparent’ status, and the upward movement has continued since.

The Asia-Pacific region has driven global transparency gains, with five of the ten most improved markets located there: India, Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, Australia and Thailand. That momentum has produced concrete economic results. JLL reported that transparency improvements fueled a recovery in cross-border investment across the region over the past year, with direct investment transaction volumes in certain markets, including Vietnam, reaching historic highs. Vietnam recorded 38.1 billion USD in registered foreign investment during the first seven months of 2026, nearly equaling the entire previous year’s total and marking the highest level in a decade.

Legal overhauls have done much of the heavy lifting. In 2024, Vietnam enacted revised laws on land, housing and real estate business that tightened the legal framework governing property transactions. The revised Law on Price introduced requirements for certified valuation professionals and verifiable audit trails. New regulations mandated that all real estate transactions flow through the banking system. This year, Decree 357 on the construction, management and operation of housing and real estate market information systems took effect, with authorities targeting completion of the national land database by the end of 2026.

Le Thi Huyen Trang, General Director of JLL Vietnam, described the achievement as the product of sustained effort rather than any single reform. “The fact that Vietnam is ranked among the global top 10 markets with the strongest improvements in transparency is the result of a long and sustained process,” she said. Trang attributed the gains to reforms across legal frameworks, administrative procedures and economic policy, pointing to rising registered foreign investment as evidence those reforms are working.

What changes for people on the ground is not abstract. In semi-transparent markets such as Vietnam, fragmented data means property valuations are estimated at roughly 70 percent accuracy, with the process typically consuming up to 20 days. In highly transparent markets, where transaction data is publicly accessible and comprehensive, accuracy reaches around 90 percent and the process takes five to ten days. Faster, more reliable valuations matter to families buying homes, businesses acquiring premises and investors weighing risk. Vo Van Huu Phuoc, senior director of valuation advisory and risk management at JLL Vietnam, said that digitizing land records, establishing a unified nationwide property registration system and adopting international valuation standards would be essential to closing that gap.

Several priorities remain. JLL’s assessment identifies the need to complete land record digitization, publish data on commercial real estate credit markets, expand green building certification, develop more comprehensive planning frameworks with reliable databases and strengthen disclosure requirements for listed companies. As artificial intelligence, shifting capital flows, energy security and geopolitical uncertainty reshape how investors evaluate opportunities worldwide, transparency is becoming less a competitive advantage and more a baseline expectation.

Whether Vietnam can sustain this pace of reform, and what that means for the families and businesses navigating its property market day to day, is the question the next survey cycle will answer. More information on Vietnam’s transparency improvements is available at https://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-breaks-into-global-top-10-for-real-estate-transparency-improvements-post352166.vnp.