Savills Vietnam's report on the Ho Chi Minh City real estate market in the first quarter of 2025 shows a significant decrease in new supply. Accordingly, only about 800 apartments were offered for sale on the market, a sharp decrease of 70% compared to the previous quarter, although still recording a growth rate of 29% compared to the same period in 2024.
Notably, more than half of the new supply is concentrated in the next phase of large-scale projects in Thu Duc City and Binh Tan District. The entire new supply in the B and C segments shows the continued scarcity of the affordable housing segment.
Limited supply of new supply and the fact that projects have been suspended and have not been restarted have caused the primary supply in the whole market to decrease by 24% compared to the previous quarter, reaching about 5,000 units. However, compared to the same period last year, primary supply still had a slight increase of 2%.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction, Ho Chi Minh City's housing development in recent years has encountered many difficulties. In 2024, the city will only have 8 commercial housing projects eligible to mobilize capital for future housing products, equivalent to 3,845 units, most of which are in the high-end segment. From 2021 to present, the total newly built area in Ho Chi Minh City has only reached about 29 million m2, completing 72.3% of the plan for the period 2021-2025, with 40 million m2.
This shows that the market is in a state of lack of housing supply to meet the needs of the majority of people, low-income and middle-income earners in urban areas.
The main reason comes from the difficulties and problems of real estate businesses in project legal procedures, land price determination, land use fees calculation, site clearance, and lack of clean land funds.
Many leaders of large real estate corporations, when asked about the story of developing housing supply, especially the low-cost housing segment to increase liquidity, also said that it is very difficult. Because, when the real estate market recovers, the story of finding clean land to balance the cost problem and project development will be a "hot" issue.
In the context of high project implementation costs, to suit the long-term orientation, many investors have shifted to areas near Ho Chi Minh City such as Binh Duong, Long An, Dong Nai, Ba Ria - Vung Tau... where land funds are still abundant and prices are also "softer". This has further led to a sharp decline in housing supply in Ho Chi Minh City.
In order to speed up the progress of housing development, especially in the context of increasing housing demand and a lack of appropriate supply, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction has requested districts, towns and Thu Duc City to review and supplement a list of more than 600 land plots expected to develop housing and urban areas by 2030.
Accordingly, the city is considering 565 land locations for commercial housing development, including 120 locations proposed by investors, 445 land areas are on the pilot list provided by the Department of Agriculture and Environment.
For the social housing segment, the Department of Construction has compiled 53 land plots to include in the development list for the 2021-2025 period; including 47 locations recognized by the Department and 6 proposed by districts.
This move aims to update the Ho Chi Minh City housing development plan for the 2021-2025 period, while preparing a database to serve the development orientation in the next phase.
According to the housing development plan for the period 2021-2025, Ho Chi Minh City aims to reach 23.5 m2 per person in terms of average housing area. During this period, Ho Chi Minh City plans to increase the number of m2 of residential floors by 50 million, equivalent to about 367,000 apartments. The city also aims to build 100,000 social housing units by 2030.
