The rapid price increase of the apartment segment in Ho Chi Minh City surprised the market. It is worth mentioning that the price increase is happening even when the market is facing many challenges and has not fully recovered.
Savills data shows that the average apartment price reached 91 million VND/m2 of water, up 36% quarterly and 40% annually, due to high new supply and existing projects.
High prices make the opportunity to own a house for people with a moderate income increasingly remote. Although the number of apartments consumed in Ho Chi Minh City in the fourth quarter of 2024 according to Savills reached 2,700 units, an increase of 43% quarter-on-quarter, the proportion of the affordable segment is decreasing, causing people with real needs to be "difficult" when looking at the price level.
In 2024, apartments priced lower or equal to VND50 million/m2 of waterproof only accounted for 18% of total sales, a sharp decrease compared to 2020 when this segment accounted for nearly 50% of sales.
Transaction volume has also decreased significantly, at 39% per year since 2020.
Speaking to reporters, Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) emphasized the very worrying issue that from 2020 to present, the high-end housing segment has accounted for the majority of the market, but there is a shortage of affordable commercial housing, with prices under VND3 billion/unit.
At the same time, there is a great shortage of social housing, leading to continuous increases in housing prices and very high "priced prices", beyond the financial capacity of the majority of people with average and low incomes.
From the practical situation above, it can be predicted that the real estate market in 2025 will still have many difficulties.
Concerned about social issues, Mr. Le Hoang Chau said that in order to promote the development of at least 1 million social housing apartments in the period of 2021-2030, the National Assembly needs to consider issuing a "Piloting Resolution on specific mechanisms and policies for social housing development".
From practice in Ho Chi Minh City, HoREA found that the biggest bottleneck is the current law enforcement work in implementing administrative processes and procedures for social housing projects, which is still the lack of coordination and pushing between departments, branches, districts, and towns, leading to the settlement of administrative procedures for social housing projects being very slow, taking a lot of time, and discouraging businesses.
Therefore, the People's Committees of localities need to pay attention to directing the drastic removal of obstacles in the coordination of departments, branches, districts and towns to shorten the time for implementing administrative procedures and processes on investment in the construction of social housing projects, first of all the procedures for "approval of investment policies at the same time as investor approval" and "approval and adjustment of 1/2000 scale zoning plans and detailed plans at a scale of 1/500".
Mr. Chau also assessed that preferential loans to buy or rent social housing; build or renovate or repair houses at the Social Policy Bank with a lending interest rate of 6.6%/year are too high, so it is necessary to lower them to 4.7% to be reasonable.
" Responding to the Program to develop at least 1 million social housing apartments for the period 2021-2030, there are currently 15 large real estate corporations and enterprises registered to participate with more than 1.5 million apartments, so in the coming time, it is necessary to implement many methods to create land funds for social housing development, especially creating conditions for investors to negotiate on receiving land use rights or having land use rights in accordance with the planning and bidding methods to select investors for social housing projects", Mr. Chau stated his opinion.
