Vietnam’s land law splits Vietnamese abroad into two categories

A Vietnamese citizen who takes a second passport and keeps the first stays inside the Land Law’s category of individual, and the statute says expressly that living abroad does not narrow what that category may take by transfer. A person of Vietnamese origin settled abroad is listed separately, with named routes rather than a general right. The line between the two runs through nationality — and it is drawn around what may be acquired, not around what is already registered.

Two entries in the same list

Article 4 of Luật Đất đai số 31/2024/QH15 enumerates seven kinds of land user. Clause 3 reads: “Cá nhân trong nước, người Việt Nam định cư ở nước ngoài là công dân Việt Nam (sau đây gọi là cá nhân)” — the domestic individual and the Vietnamese citizen settled abroad, gathered under one label, cá nhân. Clause 6 stands on its own: “Người gốc Việt Nam định cư ở nước ngoài”, a person of Vietnamese origin settled abroad.

The second term is narrower than it looks. Luật Quốc tịch Việt Nam số 24/2008/QH12 defines it as someone who once held Vietnamese nationality determined at birth by descent, together with their children and grandchildren, living long-term outside the country. Release from the nationality does not by itself put a person there. For someone settled abroad, former citizenship acquired by naturalisation rather than by descent does not on its own satisfy clause 6; the descent definition has to be met as well.

The commencement date was moved, so it is worth quoting whole. Luật số 43/2024/QH15 of 29 June 2024 replaced clause 1 of Article 252 with “Luật này có hiệu lực thi hành từ ngày 01 tháng 8 năm 2024, trừ trường hợp quy định tại khoản 2 và khoản 3 Điều này”, and brought the Housing Law forward to the same day.

What each category carries

Clause 2 of Article 28 makes receipt of transfers independent of residence: domestic organisations and individuals may take transfer of land use rights in accordance with law “không phụ thuộc vào nơi cư trú, nơi đóng trụ sở”, subject to express cross-references to clause 8 of Article 45 and Article 48, neither of which concerns emigration; clause 3 adds a further overlay for areas of restricted land access, on procedures the Government prescribes. The category has limits, and they fall on citizen and emigrant alike: an individual not directly engaged in agriculture who receives rice-growing land by transfer or gift above the ceiling in Article 176 must form an economic organisation and have a rice-land use plan approved — by the chairman of the commune-level People’s Committee since 1 July 2025, the statute’s own reference to the district level having been overtaken by Nghị định số 151/2025/NĐ-CP — unless the recipient of the gift is a person in the line of succession.

For a person of Vietnamese origin permitted to enter Vietnam, the same article supplies named routes. Point (h) of clause 1 allows them to buy or lease-purchase housing attached to residential land use rights, to take residential land use rights within a housing development project, to inherit residential land and other land in the same plot as a house, and to receive a gift of housing attached to residential land from a person in the line of succession. Point (c) adds one commercial route, naming them alongside foreign-invested economic organisations: transfer of land use rights inside industrial parks, industrial clusters and hi-tech parks.

The general transfer route sits at point (b), which names only “Tổ chức kinh tế, cá nhân”. Read with clause 3 of Article 4, which has already fixed what cá nhân means, those two provisions exclude a person of Vietnamese origin from it — a reading of two provisions together rather than the express words of either. What such an owner may then do with a residential holding is set out at Article 44: transfer, lease, gift, bequest and capital contribution of the residential land use right, and mortgage of the house attached to it with a credit institution licensed to operate in Vietnam.

Luật Nhà ở số 27/2023/QH15 does not repeat the division. Its ownership category is the umbrella term, taking in both groups on condition of permission to enter Vietnam, and it then refers the rest onward: such a person owns housing attached to residential land use rights “theo quy định của pháp luật về đất đai”. Article 10 states the priority outright — where the Land Law provides differently on the rights of such an owner, the Land Law applies.

What the statute leaves open for a title already held

This is where the law says less than people assume. Clause 1 of Article 82 sets out the cases in which land is recovered because the right to use it has terminated under law, and loss of Vietnamese nationality is not among them. That is a real point, and it is also a narrow one: it establishes that the statute provides no recovery on that ground, not that an existing holding is otherwise untouched.

Two things sit unresolved beside it. Clause 1 of Article 133 does not name a change of nationality among the events requiring registration against an issued certificate, but it does include other changes to the information recorded about the land user, and nothing in the statute says whether that reaches a change of nationality. And the rights themselves are written by category: Article 37 sets out what an individual may do with land, Article 44 what a person of Vietnamese origin who owns housing may do. Which of them governs a holder who moves between the categories while still on the title is a question the statute does not answer, and the transitional provisions at Articles 253 to 260 do not reach it either — they carry the 2013 Law’s arrangements across to the new one, not a holder’s status across time.

What moves a person across the line

Acquiring a foreign nationality is not among the grounds on which Vietnamese nationality is lost; the first ground in Article 26 is release, “Được thôi quốc tịch Việt Nam”, and Article 27 makes that a matter of application decided, under Article 38, by the President. This publication has covered that point separately; what matters here is that the second passport does not, on its own, change the category.

Luật số 79/2025/QH15, in force since 1 July 2025, supplies the other half: on Vietnamese territory the State recognises only Vietnamese nationality, in dealings with Vietnamese competent authorities, for a citizen who also holds a foreign one, unless a treaty to which Vietnam is a party provides otherwise.

Evidence of status, and the housing condition, are different things

Under Article 3 of Nghị định số 95/2024/NĐ-CP, effective the same day as the two statutes, nationality may be evidenced in several ways — an identity card, a passport, or another document with that effect. The condition attached to the housing is specified far more tightly: a Vietnamese citizen settled abroad must hold a valid Vietnamese passport bearing a Vietnamese entry stamp at the time the housing is created. The status admits alternatives; the condition does not.

An applicant holding none of the specified nationality documents is not shut out. Chapter IV of Nghị định số 191/2025/NĐ-CP allows a declared personal history supported by one of a listed set of older papers, among them papers issued by the former regime in the South or the former authorities in the North, filed with the provincial department of justice or the representative office where the applicant lives. Issuance still turns on verification and on the conditions the decree sets.

Inheritance is where the categories decide an outcome

For an heir who is a person of Vietnamese origin, Article 37 distinguishes those within the Article 44 housing bracket, who inherit the land use right, from those outside it, who take “giá trị của phần thừa kế đó” — the value of that share. Clause 2 of Article 44 deals with a different situation: where a person of Vietnamese origin gives or bequeaths housing attached to residential land use rights to someone not entitled to own housing in Vietnam, that recipient takes the value and no certificate is issued.

Where every heir is foreign or outside the bracket, no certificate issues either, but the inheritance is not forfeit. The heirs may transfer the inherited land use right or gift it to a qualifying recipient, and until they do may lodge the inheritance with the land registration body for entry in the cadastral book.

What to watch

The categories are not one-way: Article 23 of the nationality law, as rewritten in 2025, allows a person who lost Vietnamese nationality under Article 26 to apply for its restoration and to keep the foreign nationality where the conditions are met and the President permits, and a person settled abroad whose nationality is restored re-enters the citizen category, with the general transfer route open to them subject to its own conditions. The harder question is the one the statute does not answer: which rights-article governs a holder who changes category while the title stands. Until a decree or a registration practice settles it, that is a question for the land registration office holding the file, not one that can be read off the Law.