Since the beginning of the year, apartment prices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have continued to escalate in the primary and transfer markets, increasing pressure on the ability to pay of real buyers.
According to a newly published market report, real estate consulting firm CBRE said that new apartment projects over 100 million VND/m2 are appearing more and more in two large cities. In Hanoi, the total supply of newly opened for sale reached more than 10,300 units, of which 20% of units were priced at over VND120 million/m2 (excluding VAT and maintenance fees).
This is the quarter that recorded a record high in the number of openings with prices above hundreds of millions of VND/m2. High-priced projects have continuously launched, attracting the primary offering price to increase by an average of 16% quarterly and 41% over the same period last year.
Similarly in Ho Chi Minh City, about 2,550 new apartments will open for sale in the third quarter of 2025 but are mainly in the high-end segment, with common prices of 60-120 million VND/m2. New projects opened for sale in the last quarter in the central core area have an average of 120-150 million VND/m2, even exceeding 230 million VND/m2. Compared to last year, the average selling price of new apartments in the city increased by about 31%.
The rapid increase in housing prices while the absorption rate decreases is a warning sign. For example, in the Ho Chi Minh City market, according to CBRE data, high selling prices slow down the consumption of apartments. The absorption rate reached about 68%, down from 90% in the previous quarter.
Data from the One Housing Market Research Center shows that according to the unit's calculations, a well-off household (200 million-1.3 billion VND per year) needs an average of 9-10 years of working to own a 70 m2 standard apartment (priced at about 85-95 million VND/m2).
The mass-income group (under 200 million VND/year) is almost "unable to access commercial housing" when they need more than 35 years of accumulation to have enough finances. This shows that the gap between income and real estate prices is widening, posing a big challenge for the problem of housing in special cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Mr. Vo Huynh Tuan Kiet, Director of CBRE Housing Department, Ho Chi Minh City, acknowledged that with the current price level, real buyers "nearly have the opportunity to access the market". Instead, most of the transactions came from investors and speculators. When real buyers cannot participate, cash flow only circulates between investors, easily forming a price bubble, this expert commented.
In the real context, experts recommend that there should be a support mechanism for affordable commercial home buyers.
Mr. Le Hoang Chau - Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, in the current context, the commercial housing segment with a price of less than 3 billion VND is determined to have a suitable price threshold. He proposed to add buyers of commercial houses under VND3 billion per house to access a preferential loan package of VND145,000 billion, which is only for social housing. According to him, the ability to access housing for young people will increase when there is a credit policy for buyers, with reasonable interest rates, about 5.9-6.1% per year, for a period of 20-25 years.
