How Many Hoi An Old Town Buildings Are Still Private Homes

Most of the old town is somebody's house, and the authority that manages it publishes the number. In protection Zone I, 930 of 1,130 listed monuments are in private ownership, a figure given by Pham Phu Ngoc, head of the Centre for the Preservation of Hoi An World Cultural Heritage, in the Centre's journal Thong tin Nghien cuu Bao ton Di san, issue 2 of 2026 (PDF, hoianheritage.net, checked 15 September 2026).

That is the opposite of the story usually told about Hoi An, which is that the town has been emptied of residents and turned over to tailors and cafes. The commercial pressure is real and the Centre says so in the same document. But the register of protected buildings has not been transferred out of family hands, and the mechanism that prevents it is a subsidy scheme rather than a sentiment.

This article works only from what Vietnamese authorities and UNESCO have published: how many monuments there are, how they are graded, who owns them, what the ticket admits you to and funds, how many are structurally failing, and what the 2025 flood did. It does not retell the inscription history or serve as a walking overview.

How many monuments are counted?

There is no single number for Hoi An, because the counts answer different questions and were made by different bodies at different times. UNESCO's inscription describes a property of 30 hectares with a 280-hectare buffer zone, inscribed in 1999 under criteria (ii) and (v), containing "a well-preserved complex of 1,107 timber frame buildings, with brick or wooden walls" (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, checked 15 September 2026). Vietnam's domestic register is separate and larger, and it counts di tich - listed monuments - rather than timber frames.

Do not try to reconcile the figures below. Each is a valid count of a different thing, and the definition matters more than the digit.

The status layer above all of this is domestic, not international. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ranked Di tich kien truc nghe thuat Do thi co Hoi An a special national monument in the first batch, by Decision 1272/QD-TTg of 12 August 2009 (text of the decision, Vietnam News Agency archive, checked 15 September 2026). That is Vietnam's highest heritage tier and it sits alongside, not underneath, the UNESCO inscription.

The governing regulation is a provincial instrument. The Quy che bao ve Di san van hoa the gioi Khu pho co Hoi An was issued by the Quang Nam Provincial People's Committee in Decision 19/2020/QD-UBND of 18 December 2020, effective 1 January 2021, and it consolidated a stack of earlier rules going back to a 1985 draft and the 1987 protection regulation issued by the then Quang Nam - Da Nang province (Centre journal issue 2/2026, checked 15 September 2026).

Who actually owns them?

Ownership in Zone I is overwhelmingly private, and the Centre publishes the split rather than leaving it to inference. Of 1,130 architectural monuments in Zone I, 930 are privately owned (82.3 per cent), 187 are state-owned (16.5 per cent) and 13 are community-owned (1.2 per cent), per the Centre journal, issue 2 of 2026. In protection Zone II - both IIA and IIB - the same source states that almost every structure is privately or community-owned.

A second official statement from 2026 gives the same shape with different totals. Writing about the draft of a new protection regulation, a piece republished on the Centre's own site reports 953 buildings in private ownership (so huu rieng) against 188 in shared ownership (so huu chung) in Zone I (hoianheritage.net, 5 May 2026, checked 15 September 2026). The categories are drawn differently - shared rather than state plus community - so the numbers do not line up with the journal's, and both are reported here as published.

The conservation grades are the other half of the picture, because they decide what an owner may do and how much help they get. The five grades in Zone I are set out in the Centre journal as follows.

Grades and counts are published separately. The grade definitions above come from the Centre journal, issue 2 of 2026; the count of 37 in the special grade comes from the May 2026 piece on the draft regulation. No source read for this article gives the number of buildings in grades I, II, III and IV individually.

What does the ticket admit you to?

The ticket is a fixed-price book of stubs that buys entry to a set number of designated sites, not a pass to the whole old town. The Centre's own visitor page gives 80,000 VND for Vietnamese visitors and 120,000 VND for foreign visitors, with the 80,000 ticket covering a choice of three sites and the 120,000 ticket a choice of five, from more than 23 designated monuments (hoianworldheritage.org.vn, page dated 24 February 2020, checked 15 September 2026).

A later official statement gives different stub counts at the same prices. Nguyen Van Lanh, then vice-chairman of the Hoi An People's Committee, described the ticket in May 2023 as 120,000 VND with six stubs for international visitors and 80,000 VND with four stubs for domestic visitors, chosen from 25 designated sites (Thanh Nien, 15 May 2023, checked 15 September 2026). Both figures are reported as published; no source read here records a decision changing the stub count between the two dates.

Use the table below to decide what you pay for and what you leave alone.

The last two rows are where visitors most often go wrong. A house being old, beautiful and open to the street does not make it a monument on the ticket route, and walking into a courtyard because the gate is open is walking into somebody's home. The designated sites are staffed and signed; if nobody is checking a stub, you are not at a ticket site.

The compulsory-ticket episode of 2023 is widely misremembered, and what was implemented is narrower than the headlines. Hoi An announced in early April 2023 that from 15 May all visitors including Vietnamese would have to buy a ticket to enter the core zone, which produced a public argument (Tuoi Tre, 4 April 2023, checked 15 September 2026). The plan that actually took effect on 15 May 2023 controlled tickets only for organised tour groups and travel-agency parties, encouraged but did not require purchase from independent visitors, and let residents and anyone entering for non-tourist reasons use every entrance (Thanh Nien, 15 May 2023, checked 15 September 2026).

That remains contested three years later. In 2026 the Centre reported ticket revenue of 196 billion VND for 2025 against a 2026 target of 220 to 240 billion VND, with only about 59 billion collected in the first quarter despite it being peak season, and the director of Da Nang's Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism asked the Centre to set up control gates and to notify travel companies of the compulsory purchase rule for groups (hoianheritage.net, 5 May 2026, checked 15 September 2026).

How does the restoration subsidy work?

The subsidy is the mechanism that keeps the houses as houses, and it predates the current regulation by about two decades. In 2004 the Quang Nam People's Committee approved a feasibility project for emergency restoration of monuments at risk of collapse in the Hoi An World Heritage site, with total investment of more than 47 billion VND covering 94 monuments - 30 state-owned and 64 private or collective - funded 40 per cent from central and provincial budgets and 60 per cent from the city budget and the owners themselves (Centre journal issue 2/2026, checked 15 September 2026). That project also introduced three-year interest-free loans for restoration.

The rule in force now grants a private owner between 40 and 75 per cent of the cost. The share depends on the building's conservation grade and on where it stands: monuments in lanes and alleys receive a higher rate than those on main streets, explicitly because they benefit less from tourism. What the subsidy is allowed to pay for is grade-dependent in the same way the grades table above sets out - everything for special and grade I, the front block plus roofs elsewhere for grade II, roof systems only for grades III and IV, and 40 per cent per eligible item in Zone IIA (Centre journal issue 2/2026, checked 15 September 2026).

The scheme's own accounts are published and they are modest. Between 1999 and 2024, 357 monuments received restoration support totalling 52,910.032 million VND, of which 38,666.665 million came from the city budget and 14,243.367 million from owners' contributions. Annual figures swing hard: 2 monuments in 2024, 26 in 2022, 40 in 2006. Over the same period the Centre issued or recommended 5,344 building and restoration permit applications, granting 4,526, which is the scale of privately funded work happening alongside the subsidy.

A separate 25-year account gives the wider figure. From 1999 to 2019 state budget and donor funding reached 167 billion VND and restored around 300 monuments in state and private ownership, while the provincial emergency-restoration project running since 2005 supported nearly 100 more on a 40 per cent province, 60 per cent city split, and residents privately funded repairs to more than 2,000 monument-instances (Centre, 4 August 2025, checked 15 September 2026).

There is also a small standing payment for community monuments. Since 2010 Hoi An has paid a monthly protection allowance for 46 valuable community religious monuments: 350,000 VND per month per person for nationally ranked monuments, 300,000 VND for provincially ranked ones and 270,000 VND for those on the city protection list, with a network of heritage conservation collaborators, reconstituted in 2020 with 27 members, paid 150,000 VND a month each (Centre journal issue 2/2026, checked 15 September 2026).

The gap between the subsidy and the cost is the whole problem. Nguyen Van Lanh put the cheapest full restoration at around 5 billion VND in April 2023, meaning the annual slice of ticket income covered seven to ten houses (Tuoi Tre, 4 April 2023, checked 15 September 2026). The Centre's 2026 journal adds the non-financial constraints in its own words: timber is scarce under forest protection policy, replacement yin-yang tiles cannot be made by traditional methods under environmental rules, and there is no certification standard for the workers who physically carry out restoration.

How many are falling down?

Hoi An surveys its degraded monuments before every storm season and publishes the result, so this is one of the few heritage-condition figures anywhere in Vietnam you can actually read. In the 2024 survey, run from June that year by the Centre with ward authorities and conservation collaborators, 36 monuments were assessed as degraded: 9 severely, 18 heavily and 9 lightly. The Centre proposed propping 26 and dismantling 10 that could no longer be safely propped, naming the addresses 12/11 Bach Dang, 7/2 Nguyen Hue, 71/4 and 98 Phan Chau Trinh, 23 Tieu La, 26 Tran Quy Cap, 35, 50/9 and 76/18 Tran Phu and 56/10 Le Loi (VietnamPlus, 10 October 2024, checked 15 September 2026).

The 2025 survey, run after the flood, checked 1,155 monuments and found 30 degraded: 9 severe, 14 heavy, 7 light. The Centre propped one itself - 23 Tieu La, in the critical group - owners propped or reinforced 19 more, and 10 were proposed for emergency restoration or dismantling, being buildings already propped in previous years and now past propping (Thanh Nien, 1 December 2025, checked 15 September 2026).

Those numbers are much smaller than the one quoted during the 2023 ticket argument, when Nguyen Van Lanh said Hoi An had around 155 degraded monuments under propping - 14 per cent - of which more than 20 could collapse at any time. The 2023 figure appears to count monuments standing on props, and the 2024 and 2025 figures count monuments newly assessed as degraded in that year's survey. Both are official; they are not the same measurement, and they are not reconciled here.

What the dismantling proposals reveal is the ownership problem in physical form. The Centre has stated that taking down a severely degraded private monument in order to restore it is often not feasible, because the building may be a family ancestral chapel or held jointly by many heirs, and getting a single decision out of the owners is not simple.

What does the flooding do?

Hoi An floods every year, and in late October 2025 it flooded to the highest level in living memory. Flood level at Hoi An reached 3.4 m at 03:30 on 30 October 2025, matching the peak of the great 1964 flood (Tuoi Tre, 30 October 2025, checked 15 September 2026). Measured on the Thu Bon river at the Cau Lau gauge, the same event exceeded the 1964 record by about 0.12 m (Thanh Nien, 1 December 2025, checked 15 September 2026).

The household figure is the one to hold onto. Da Nang's military command recorded 5,826 households flooded in Hoi An ward, covering more than 80 per cent of the ward's area, at depths of 0.5 to 2 m, with 29 wards and communes across Da Nang badly flooded (Tuoi Tre, 30 October 2025, checked 15 September 2026). Chua Cau, the covered bridge that is the town's emblem, was submerged nearly to its roof.

No source read for this article gives a count of monuments damaged by that flood. What is documented is the institutional response: on 9 November 2025 Da Nang chairman Pham Duc An inspected the old town and instructed the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism to propose emergency conservation measures and to establish a Da Nang cultural heritage conservation fund, while the Centre asked for a mechanism supporting 40 to 100 per cent of restoration costs and a dedicated Hoi An heritage fund drawing on ticket revenue (Thanh Nien, 1 December 2025, checked 15 September 2026).

What could not be verified?

The single biggest gap is the one the article's question most wants filled: no source read here states how many of Hoi An's privately owned monuments are actually inhabited as opposed to let out as shops. Ownership is published and occupancy is not. The Centre comes closest when it notes, as a management difficulty, the problem of monuments left locked and unoccupied outside business hours, making it hard for officials to reach them in the event of fire, flood or theft - an acknowledgement that some share of the 930 is uninhabited, without a number attached.

Several other points stayed open. The per-grade counts for grades I, II, III and IV could not be found; only the special grade's 37 is published. The full text of Decision 19/2020/QD-UBND could not be read directly - thuvienphapluat.vn returned 403 to a direct fetch and the decision's details are reported here from the Centre's own summary of it plus the document register's metadata. Whether the current entrance ticket gives three and five stubs, as the Centre's page states, or four and six, as the People's Committee vice-chairman stated in 2023, could not be settled; no decision changing it was located. No official count of monuments damaged in the October 2025 flood was found, and no official record of annual flood levels as a series was found, only individual event reports. The old town site hoianworldheritage.org.vn failed TLS verification on 15 September 2026 and had to be read over plain HTTP, and its ticket page carries a 2020 date, so prices should be confirmed at the ticket desk.

Finally, the draft regulation reported in May 2026 is a draft. Its proposed subsidy rates - 60 per cent for special-grade monuments, 45 per cent for grades I and II, 40 per cent for grades III and IV in Zone I, and 40 per cent per item in Zone IIA - are a consultation proposal published by the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, not rules in force. The rates currently in force are the 40 to 75 per cent band under the 2020 regulation.

What should you do with this?

Treat the old town as a residential neighbourhood with a couple of dozen ticketed openings in it, and your visit changes shape immediately. Buy the ticket, pick your stubs deliberately - the assembly halls and the family chapels show you two entirely different building types - and accept that the other several hundred protected houses are viewed from the street.

Read the roofs rather than the facades. Grade III exists as a category because a yin-yang tile roof is the last original element many buildings retain, and the subsidy for grades III and IV pays for roofs alone. A run of intact tiled roofing over modernised shopfronts is the conservation system working exactly as written, not a failure of it.

Look into the lanes. The subsidy pays a higher percentage to monuments in kiet and hem - alleys - precisely because they earn nothing from tourism, and the Centre has said those households often cannot fund repairs at all. The alleys are where you see what the old town looks like without a commercial floor under it, and they are also where you should be most careful about doorways.

Buy the ticket even if nobody stops you. The Centre's published position is that 55 per cent of ticket revenue goes to the state budget for restoration and about 9 per cent of its own retained share is paid directly to private and collective owners on the route. In a town where a single restoration costs around 5 billion VND and the annual subsidy programme has averaged roughly 14 monuments a year since 1999, the ticket is the main funded route from tourism back into the buildings.

This article does not cover the UNESCO inscription history or the criteria behind it, which are treated separately, and it is not a first-time walking overview. It does not list opening hours for individual ticket sites, does not cover accommodation, food or tailoring, and does not cover My Son or Cu Lao Cham. Nothing here was confirmed on the ground; every figure carries the date it was checked and the body that published it, and prices and survey counts change.