Ms. Van Hoang Mai (29 years old, Dong Trieu, Quang Ninh) and her husband are currently working as office workers at a food company in Hanoi. After nearly ten years of hard work, Ms. Mai and her husband have saved more than 1 billion VND. With this amount of money, Ms. Mai and her husband hope to buy a small apartment in Hanoi to start a stable life, escaping the precarious situation of renting a house.
However, after Ms. Mai started looking for an apartment, reality quickly shattered her hopes. Apartment prices in Hanoi have skyrocketed, apartments under 25 million VND/m2 have almost become "extinct". Projects in the Hoang Mai, Ha Dong, and Nam Tu Liem areas that Ms. Mai had previously planned to look into have also become luxurious when the prices are mostly over 40 million VND/m2.
"I spent a lot of time going around the neighborhoods, visiting real estate companies, and attending seminars on housing investment but still couldn't find any apartments that were financially suitable. If we closed on apartments worth more than VND3 billion, my husband and I would have to bear a very high interest rate," Mai shared.
Not only Ms. Mai, but many people from other places who come to Hanoi to live and work are also in the same situation. They all have the dream of settling down but cannot reach it because real estate prices are increasing.
According to a recent study by the One Housing Center for Market Research and Customer Insights, the residential real estate market in Hanoi in 2025 is forecast to record more than 30,000 new apartments, equivalent to the peak period of 2016 - 2019.
Of which, 48% of new supply will come from the Eastern area of Hanoi, with projects from Vinhomes Ocean Park 1 - 2. In contrast, supply in the Western area mainly comes from sales of existing projects.
Although the apartment supply has shown clear signs of recovery, Mr. Tran Quang Trung - Business Development Director of OneHousing said that the selling price is still unlikely to decrease. The reason comes from the fact that the newly opened supply is mainly in the high-end and luxury segments.
According to experts from the Vietnam Association of Realtors (VARS), to solve the shortage of affordable housing supply, strong intervention from the State is needed.
Firstly, the State needs to research and develop policies to create favorable conditions for investors to develop affordable commercial apartments, such as applying policies to exempt land tax, corporate tax, etc. At the same time, prioritize the approval of planning and construction permits, helping to shorten project development time, thereby reducing investment costs.
Second, the State should promote public-private partnership projects to build affordable housing. The private sector will undertake most of the construction and development, while the State provides land incentives and legal support.
Third, in parallel with promoting supply, state management agencies need to have policies to support people's demand for housing. The government can study the establishment of a fund to support the development and maintenance of low-cost apartment supply. This fund can be supplemented from the state budget and from private investors.
In particular, the State needs to establish agencies or committees to supervise housing and take strict sanctions against cases of speculation, price manipulation or illegal price increases.
However, for regulatory policies to be truly effective and ensure the market operates safely and healthily in the long term, the State needs to soon complete the information and data system on the real estate market and the system for managing identified housing.
