Today I met up with one of my friend who was working in a bank in Laos. She mentioned that in Laos, there is no such thing like here where developers have to be certified by some board. Loans can be issued out to small time developers. Some of these so called developers are just simple contractors. The bank's branch managers can authorized payment to these developers according to their discretion. There is no official schedule payment and building architect sign off required. There were cases where the branch manager failed to inspect the development and released bank funds to the developer. This caused the bank losses when the developer fails to deliver the house and the borrower in turn will default on the loan.
Sometimes I do think we take our housing laws for granted as things seem pretty bad elsewhere.