A survey of price levels at a number of real estate projects opened for sale in the first quarter of 2025 shows that the apartment market in Ho Chi Minh City recorded an average selling price of VND 88.4 million/m2, up 4.9% quarter-on-quarter and 22.4% year-on-year.
One of the factors driving this upward trend is the scarcity of supply in the primary market.
Most of the projects opening for sale in the first quarter of 2025 have witnessed an increase in selling prices.
Typically, Vinhomes Grand Park project recorded a price increase of 3 - 13% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. Or in the South of Ho Chi Minh City, Quoc Cuong Gia Lai opened for sale phase 3 of the Lavida Plus project (District 7) with nearly 150 apartments, priced from 55 - 60 million VND/m2, Khai Hoan Prime (Nha Be) also launched new products at 60 - 65 million VND/m2. Both projects have increased their selling prices by nearly 15% compared to the same period last year.
New projects in the East and neighboring areas such as Fiato Uptown, The 9 Stellar or projects in Binh Duong such as orchard Height (CapitaLand), Emerald 68, Astral City also recorded prices increasing by 8 - 20% compared to before.
Regarding inventory structure, according to data from a number of market research companies, most of the current inventory is concentrated in the high-end segment, accounting for about 60% of the total inventory in the market in the first quarter of 2025.
According to a report from real estate consulting firm Knight Frank Vietnam, in the first quarter, the apartment market in Ho Chi Minh City recorded a sluggish supply and demand. New supply fell to a five-year low and liquidity also declined compared to the previous quarter.
In the first 3 months of the year, Ho Chi Minh City only recorded 689 apartments sold successfully. The absorption rate reached 16%, down nearly 47% compared to the average consumption recorded in 2024 and returned to the purchasing power at the beginning of last year (when the market was quiet).
Not only is market absorption low, in the last quarter, Ho Chi Minh City also had the lowest number of newly launched products since 2020.
Ho Chi Minh City only has 619 newly opened apartments (investors open for sale for the first time) along with more than 3,600 inventory products from previous sales, the total primary supply is about 4,200 apartments.
According to Frank, in the last quarter, 80% of products successfully sold fell into a new basket of products, launched for the first time. Meanwhile, inventory baskets only consume about 11%.
More than 90% of the primary supply baskets in the quarter belonged to the mid-high-end, affordable segment (under 55 million VND per m2) accounting for only 10%.
Explaining the factors that have caused the liquidity of apartments in the South to not break out, Mr. Vo Hong Thang - Deputy General Director of DKRA Group - said that there are two main factors including the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday and under-diversified products and high selling prices.
Mr. Thang acknowledged that more than 76% of the primary supply opened for sale in the past 2 months was the high-end apartment segment, priced at over 75 million VND/m2 in Ho Chi Minh City and over 40 million VND/m2 in Binh Duong. While the mid-range, affordable segment (under 35 million VND/m2) is still quite rare for some projects in Long An.
The basket of goods is also less diverse as most of them are old projects opening for sale in the next phase with adjusted prices increasing by 5-10%. Policies of quick payment discounts, payment extension, gifts for sale... are applied by investors to reduce selling prices and stimulate the market, but have not been effective.
