According toa Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) survey, the purchase of the Capital Place,a Grade A office building in the heart of Hanoi, by Viva Land from CapitaLandDevelopment for 550 million USD, heated up the office M&A market.
Thehigh-class office project consists of two 37-story office towers, selected tohouse the main offices of many multinational corporations in the capital city.
Previously,Viva Land also successfully acquired Saigon One Tower and renamed it IFC One,Saigon.
The project,which is located at the heart of district 1 of Ho Chi Minh City, is designed asa commercial building including offices, apartments and a commercial centrewith a total floor area of 124,100 square metres (sq.m).
For thehousing segment, the market has also recorded a number of huge deals, such asNovaland's acquisition of the Kenton Node project from Tai Nguyen ConstructionProduction Trading Co. and renaming it Grand Sentosa. This is a luxuryapartment project with more than 1,640 apartments in Phuoc Kien commune, Nha Bedistrict, HCM City.
Anothernoteworthy transaction is the purchase of the Saigon Binh An project, which isnow known as The Global City, by Masterise Homes. The 117ha project is locatednext to the Saigon Sports City complex and the Long Thanh-Dau Giay highway.
Recently,the US investment fund Warburg Pincus announced an investment of 250 millionUSD in Novaland to increase the land bank and develop Novaland's existingprojects in strategic locations, taking advantage of the infrastructure that isgradually improving in the southern region.
Two otherinvestment funds - VinaCapital and Dragon Capital - also poured 103 million USDin Hung Thinh Land JSC, C&W’s survey showed.
Meanwhile,industrial real estate remains the hottest segment in the M&A market,accounting for 35% of the sector's total transaction value with numerous deals.
Early this year,GLP established GLP Vietnam Development Partners I with a total investment of 1.1billion USD in six logistics centre projects.
GLP is a topinvestment manager and business developer for facilities, digitalinfrastructure, renewable energy, and logistics.
In February,BW Industrial Development JSC - an industrial real estate developer co-foundedby Warburg Pincus and Becamex IDC - acquired about 74,000sq.m of land in Bac TienPhong Industrial Park in Quang Ninh province developed by DEEP C.
C&WCompany said that a recent notable deal was the acquisition of a 49% stake inKTG & Boustead Logistics Industrial JSC in Yen Phong Industrial Park in BacNinh province by Boustead Projects Co., Ltd for 6.9 million USD.
Trang Bui,head of Cushman & Wakefield, said that residential and industrial propertywill be the most attractive sectors for investors and developers from HCM City,Hanoi, and neighbouring provinces.
Besidestraditional real estate types, in the past two quarters, an investment in datacentre real estate was also announced by Gaw Capital Partners, a HongKong-based private investment firm, with a Tier 3 Data Centre project, built ona site of 6,056sq.m in the Sai Gon Hi-Tech Park of HCM City.
Experts saidthat despite the slowing growth rate of countries in the region, the Vietnameseeconomy grew at 7.72% in the second quarter of 2022, the highest level in 11years.
Vietnam seta new record with 10.06 billion USD in capital from foreign investors in thefirst half of 2022.
Leadingforeign investors in the real estate market include Singapore, Japan, Denmark,China, and the Republic of Korea.
C&W alsoidentified many existing problems related to the market, such as legalprocedures. However, as the legal system is gradually improving in order tolimit conflicts among regulations in the investment legal system, it willpartly remove many existing barriers for M&A activities in the real estatemarket this year./.