Building a house in vietnam

charlie54 wrote:

My spouse have a 600m squared of vacant land on the out skirts of Ho Chi Minh, I want to build a house on the vacant land by myself from scratch.
Have anyone here had similar experience? If so, can you give a run down of what permit and license you will need.
For example:
Do you need a local builder license to build a house in your spouse's land?
Do you need building permit to build a 2 storey house in country side?
What are some of the rule and regulation you need to follow?

I am a structural engineer by trade but would love to build a house overseas without too much legal restriction like in Australia.
 
Thanks in advance.

You want to actually build it by hand, or sub-contract the work out.

brick by brick

I want to build it by hand from scratch
From foundation, framing, cladding, roofing and possibly plumbing, electrical services if regulation allows.

As a structural engineer, you of all people should have an appreciation of how many man-years are involved in building even a modest single story house.  I think you should rather quickly realize that you want to be the prime contractor while subbing out the component parts.  That way you can control quality without being tied to manual labor for what likely would be well over a year working full time. 

You also surely know that many, if not most, construction jobs are more efficiently run in small gangs.  The bricklaying crew needs one more to mix the mortar and another to carry the bricks to keep the one laying the bricks at maximum efficiency.  Other jobs like mounting roof trusses in place could be nearly impossible for someone working alone.

I have been in a home in Huyện Củ Chi possibly a lot like what you envision.  It was technically within HCMC but certainly in the country.  It was single story, with three bedrooms and western style kitchens and two bathrooms, including a full bathroom off of the master bedroom and insect screens on all the windows.  It had what I assume were brick walls, stucco covered.  It had been originally built by overseas Vietnamese but resold to another Viet Kieu who owned it when I was there.

THIGV wrote:

AIt was single story, with three bedrooms and western style kitchens and two bathrooms, including a full bathroom off of the master bedroom and insect screens on all the windows.  It had what I assume were brick walls, stucco covered.

Exactly what I want to build if I get the land bought next to my in-laws.  It's 10 acres so zero reason to add a second floor.  The only other notable thing I want to add is the entire one end of the house that faces the huge 30km long lake is a huge covered ground level terrace for indoor/outdoor living.

That said, considering the little bit of money I spent re-doing my in laws' house this spring there is no way I would do it myself even though I've built and remodeled a dozen houses before in the US. It's just too cheap to hire a crew.  For example, my father in law was grateful that I was doing his house so he wanted to build me a bedroom so I would be more comfortable when I visited.  Never mind I had to pay for it, but the intention was good. LOL. Anyway once I found out that while they were already adding onto the house the additional cost for a 3x4 meter bedroom, complete with foundation, floor, walls, roof, stucco inside, tile floor and four feet up on the walls only added 10,000,000vnd to the total bill I told them to go ahead.

Total bill for the remodel was 260,000,000 vnd.  Work was adding bedroom, laundry room, bathroom, shower room as new addition, gutting and completely re-doing the kitchen, raising floor in kitchen, dining room and living room 20cm to make a flat floor with no more steps in the house, re-tiling the entire house, painting the interior, new roof on the house, new drop ceiling in entire house and paving the road 3 meter wide from the house to the highway 300 meters with crushed rock then concrete (I got 70% cost share from the government on this).

charlie54 wrote:

I want to build it by hand from scratch
From foundation, framing, cladding, roofing and possibly plumbing, electrical services if regulation allows.

To be honest, its best you check building techniques here. 99% of houses are masonary, no framing required.

colinoscapee wrote:

To be honest, its best you check building techniques here. 99% of houses are masonary, no framing required.

And for the OP, they even make their own door and window headers by building a box form, laying in rebar and pouring concrete headers.  They are then lifted into place like a standard header and they continue to brick.  No wood anywhere.