The 488 houses and villas of the Tan Thinh Residential Area, also known as “Viva Park,” are built on 18 hectares atop a Trang Bom District hill in Dong Nai Province, around 60 kilometers east of Ho Chi Minh City.
Ho Chi Minh City-based LDG Investment JSC obtained approval to invest in the project in 2018.
But 2020, which much of the area’s construction already underway, inspectors found LDG in serious violation of a series of rules related to construction of the project.
LDG Investment had not yet obtained a construction license, nor had the investor compensated the owners of the former rubber farmland the project was being built on.
Land transfer procedures – certifying that the former farmland would be repurposed for a residential area – had not been completed properly. And the company had not even been officially granted the land on which it was already building the new homes.
By 2020, the investor had already built 488 villas and 290 adjoining houses, and the foundations for 192 other adjoining houses had also been constructed.
The main entrance to the project, which was advertised as “Vietnam’s first smart urban area.” The neighborhood was to be equipped with a school, park and supermarket for easy, convenient access for residents.
In its early days, the project had attracted hundreds of potential buyers from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong Province, and Hanoi every day.
Wild grass now covers many of the villas since the project had been suspended.
After the inspections, Dong Nai fined the investor VND540 million (US$23,119) and seized VND5.8 billion that the company had generated from selling the unfinished project’s units.
Many houses are all but abandoned and have not been occupied since they were completed three years ago.
A footpath used by a stray dog was originally supposed to be a road through the housing development. Now the place looks more like a ghost town.
At present, seven of the project’s villas are currently occupied.
One family living here said they bought the villa in 2019 for VND1.7 trillion and had already paid 90% of the cost when the project was suspended 3 years ago.
“Police have visited us a couple times recently to collect information [related to violations by the investor],” one member of the family said.
The occupied villas do have access to water and power.
But many of these houses have been left half-finished. And nature is beginning to take her land back.
Inspectors said LDG Investment JSC had signed contracts to sell houses to 60 clients for some VND132 billion in total.
Dong Nai authorities identified that 20 officials working at local state agencies as well as the People’s Committee of Trang Bom District had committed violations allowing LDG to evade the rules necessary for such projects.
The case has now been transferred to local police for further investigation, and the fate of the project remains unclear.
