Experts expect the real estate industry to recover from the second half of this year and enter a new growth cycle. To the business community, leaders seem more cautious.
At the annual meeting with shareholders, big business leaders made forecasts and comments about this year’s real estate market with opportunities intertwined with challenges.
Vinhomes, a leading enterprise in the real estate industry with a large land bank, the project stretches across the country, aiming for profit after tax of VND 35,000 billion this year, up about 4% and the highest in the last 2 years.
Assessing the real estate market this year, Mr. Pham Shao Hoa – Chairman of the Board of Directors – said that the bright spot is that 3 laws related to real estate passed by the National Assembly will help the market be more transparent and clear. However, in order for these laws to positively affect the market, he said it was necessary to wait for the implementing decrees to take effect.
Ms. Nguyen Thu Hang – General Director of Vinhomes – assessed that the market will recover but not really as quickly as expected.
The demand for housing in Vietnam is still great when the urbanization rate is high along with the young population. The demand for starting a family, settling down and owning a home of young people is still very large. Since then, the supply of real estate will recover in big cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong but there are still limitations, especially products with legal conditions and guaranteed locations.
According to Ms. Hang, the market has shown more positive signals for accessing capital from both businesses and customers. Bonds issued by this enterprise in recent times are well absorbed.
Home buyers are now supported with better interest rates than before, fixed interest rates for the first 2 years at 6-6.5% / year. This facilitates and confidence for homebuyers to return to the market.
As for Nam Long Investment Joint Stock Company, which is implementing many large projects in Ho Chi Minh City, Long An, Can Tho, Dong Nai, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Quang – Chairman of the Board of Directors raised both opportunities and challenges.
Mr. Quang analyzed the first challenge related to the market and products. The market is misaligned with supply and demand in different real estate segments, a crisis of confidence leads to reduced liquidity problems and increased inventories.
The second is the financial challenge as debts remain, bond lots, although extended, will persist in 2024 and 2025. Number 3 is the legal challenge of the project when currently some laws still overlap.
However, according to him, the market also opens up various opportunities such as high real demand, affordable housing segments, and social housing development. Lending rates are down, even lower than before Covid-19 and competitive with many other countries, so they are very attractive.
In particular, new laws related to real estate have just been enacted. The Government makes great efforts in creating, removing and promoting market bottlenecks towards sustainable development.
For Dat Xanh Group, which has many projects in Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai, Mr. Luong Tri Thin – Chairman of the Board of Directors – said that after the end of Covid 19, the economy was reduced and affected the real estate market.
After Tet, the market began to show positive signs of recovery. Apartment products in the first quarter have resumed transactions, although not as high as previous years, but compared to the last two quarters of 2023 and the first quarter of 2023, the number of transactions has doubled, especially in Hanoi 3 times.
With such a general situation, Mr. Thin found that the market still has positive points such as there is still a scarcity of decent average supply; people’s need for housing is still huge; Cheap cash flow is currently very good, many customers borrow with a term of 20 years, the fixed interest rate for 3 years is only from 5-6% / year.
At an overall level, the overall market this year will prosper and 2025 will have positive changes.
For research units, the survey data also reflects the recent positive market movements. According to Batdongsan.com.vn, 62% of brokers polled said their clients were down on buying properties with good prices or sales policies.
The unit’s real estate consumer sentiment report for the first half of 2024 also reflects that up to 65% of survey participants plan to buy real estate in the next 1 year.
In the first quarter of the year, condominiums in Hanoi were one of the most noticed types of real estate. Apartment prices in Hanoi have increased sharply from 11% to 19% in the past 1 year, approaching Ho Chi Minh City apartment prices. The amount of interest in Hanoi apartments of people in Ho Chi Minh City also increased by 7.5 times compared to the beginning of 2021.
Mr. Aries Duong, General Director of Batdongsan.com.vn, explained this price increase due to limited supply while demand is still very large, not only from Hanoi and the northern provinces but also from the South.
The northward trend of some southern developers, which have a loyal customer base, has partly drawn interest from the south. The projects of Southern investors also contribute to diversifying and improving the quality of real estate in the northern market.
