New building rules passed in Da Nang and this is great news

With all the construction that has been going on in the rapidly expanding beach area of Da Nang it can be quite frustrating that it seems as though almost everything everywhere is under construction. Whenever someone comes by and looks at a plot of land that is near where you live there is a certain amount of fear that comes into your mind because since there is very little protection as far as noise pollution is concerned in this country you could be in a situation where your neighborhood is just going to be loud as can be all day, every day, for a very long time.

This is something that those of us that call this part of the country try to avoid but I don't really see the point in moving to another location because guess what? They are building there as well.

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It's hard to imagine, but this entire area used to have basically nothing on it 20 years ago. Now they seem to be sprinting to see how quickly they can put something made of cement on every imaginable surface until they run out of land.

Rapid expansion has just become commonplace and the people who are moving from place to place hoping to encounter an area that doesn't have construction going on near it almost always fail because just because there isn't construction there right now doesn't mean it is going to stay that way. If there is vacant land you can rest assured that somebody is already thinking of building on it and it is only a matter of time. A good strategy would actually be to move somewhere that already has all the land already built. This doesn't mean that someone wont come along and do some demolition and THEN build up, but the chances are a lot less likely.

Nearly Hoi An has had regulations for quite some time that have disallowed building anything that is above a certain number of floors but up until recently we have had no such regulations here in town. If someone digs far enough into the ground and passes some sort of structural tests, the sky is literally the limit. That little plot of land near your condos could end up being a 20 story building that takes 3 years to build.

Until now... apparently.

According to my landlord, who I was speaking to in the elevator today regarding a build that is going up across the street from my current building. A law was just passed in regards to the An Thuong area of Da Nang that no new builds can make a structure that is taller than 5 stories. So depending on how you view "stories" this means the ground floor with a maximum of 5 additional stops on the elevator and then a roof.

This might not seem like much, but it is a wonderful thing for those of us that have endured the massive builds that just keep going and going. This will have the effect of slowing down the massively expanding building here because the land cost is so high here that very few people are going to be engaged in buying a plot of land that costs millions of dollars if they are only allowed to put something that is a maximum of 5 stories tall.

This ruling happened at some point in the past month and applies only to new builds. Buildings whose plans were approved before that date are still allowed to build to their original specifications but this is great news for those of us that want a bit of quiet every now and then because developers are no longer allowed to engages in this sort of really expensive rat-race as far as having seaview is concerned. In the 7 years that I have lived here I have seen one building made quite tall with the top floors having a seaview only to have the land opposite it bought and now that view is completely gone.

The main reason why this is good for us regular people is that any new build is not going to take multiple years to complete.

A side effect of this and probably why the government got involved in the first place, was that people were building so quickly in an effort to engage in the completely untrue housing crisis that at this pace, the amount of living quarters is going to greatly outnumber the number of people actually looking for living quarters once they are all complete.

Sometimes I feel as though these developers are really not thinking so well as far as the long term is concerned because once the already existing builds are complete, the supply is going to greatly outnumber the demand. We are probably still a few years away from that point but once we get there it will be a renters' market again and Da Nang can return (hopefully) to its former glory and become a desirable destination again. As it is right now, there was no end to the construction as demand kept increasing and the supply was quite low.

just off the top of my head there are at least 7 absolutely massive builds that are near completion, and once this happens we will likely see a dramatic shift in the cost of apartments which at the moment is really high relative to the region.

I don't often follow the politics of Vietnam and just am happy to sit by the wayside but this is one bit of legislation that I am really happy to see. This should dramatically change the way this city, especially the area that I live in, operates and perhaps we will see a pause on construction at least for a little while.