Real estate market expected to prosper this year

By year’s end, Vietnam’s real estate market in 2010 will be more ebullient than last year thanks to the abundance of properties, predict experts.
By year’s end, Vietnam’s real estate market in 2010 will be more ebullient than last year thanks to the abundance of properties, predict experts.

However, according to them, property price in the country is likely to go up and down erratically.

A series of large apartment buildings, which started construction in the capital city of Hanoi last December, signalled an increase in demand, the experts said. Of them, the most noteworthy are six apartment buildings in the Viet Hung new urban area and a high-class apartment building in Ha Dong, they added.

To reduce the population density in the city’s centre, Hanoi plans to build satellite urban areas in Soc Son, Me Linh, Quoc Oai, Xuan Mai and Mieu Mon in the near future.

However, experts stated that the signals are not strong enough to help stabilise property price in Hanoi . They said prices of small and medium-sized apartments may rise sharply as demand for these kinds of apartments is expected larger than supplied. At present, low-priced apartments of 300-500 million VND each are in lack while higher-class apartments priced at 2-3 billion VND are always in oversupply.

Dang Van Quang, chief consultant at the Jones Lang LaSalle Vietnam , attributed the paradox to continual price fevers in the cheap property market last year.

Meanwhile, in Ho Chi Minh City , investors and buyers will have much to look forward to when 25,000-30,000 apartments are placed on the market this year. However, only a small number of these are in the lower price range.

Nguyen Manh Ha, Director of the Department of Housing Development and Property Market under the Ministry of Construction, said he believed that the property market would adjust itself as the demand for middle price range accommodations and workshops remain very high.

Last year’s census shows that there are 25.4 million people in the country’s urban areas while the total housing area is 309 million sq. metres (equivalent to 12.8 sq. m per person. It is expected that the population in the urban areas will rise to around 35 million in 2015 while the average per capita housing area should be raised to 15 sq. m, so the demand for housing in the urban areas will be 525 million sq. metres./.

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