Currently, primary apartment prices in Ho Chi Minh City are about 10% higher than Hanoi. In 2024, experts forecast that this gap will be “equalized.”
CBRE Vietnam’s recent report on the Ho Chi Minh City apartment market reveals that during the first quarter, the entire city had approximately 500 apartments available for sale on the market. Most of these are still the next phase of projects that opened for sale last year, of which there are just over 80 units in the luxury apartment segment in the South Saigon area.
As per CBRE Vietnam, this marks the lowest number of apartments offered for sale in a quarter in the past 15 years in Ho Chi Minh City. Compared to the same period last year, this supply is only 17%.
The selling price of the apartment has not changed much. By the end of the first quarter of 2024, the primary price of apartments in Ho Chi Minh City stood at 61 million VND/m2, remaining unchanged compared to the previous quarter and declining approximately 3% compared to the same period last year.
Mr. Vo Huynh Tuan Kiet, Director of CBRE Vietnam’s housing project marketing department, noted that unlike the market trends in Ho Chi Minh City, the majority of apartment supply in Hanoi hails from the high-end segment, which has contributed to an uptick in primary selling prices. Presently, the average selling price of apartments in Hanoi stands at 56 million VND/m2.
In the first quarter, there was a notable reduction in the difference between the primary selling prices of apartments in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Whereas during the 2021-2022 period, apartment prices in Ho Chi Minh City were 35% higher than those in Hanoi, the current gap has decreased significantly to approximately 10%. “Mr. Kiet analyzed that apartment prices in Hanoi are forecasted to catch up with those in Ho Chi Minh City this year.”
Meanwhile, Savills Vietnam also believes that primary supply in Ho Chi Minh City has decreased sharply when 9 projects temporarily suspended sales to complete legal arrangements or adjust policies, and 2 projects postponed opening sales.
Simultaneously, coupled with the influence of the Lunar New Year holiday, the apartment transaction activity in Ho Chi Minh City during the first quarter of this year remained subdued. Specifically, there were only 1,116 transactions, down 63% compared to the previous quarter but up 29% over the same period last year.
Savills Vietnam experts noted that in the first quarter, investors’ sales strategies included the introduction of preferential mortgage interest rates for up to 15 years, marking the first occurrence of such incentives at a project in Thu Duc City.
In addition, many projects are also applying discount policies of up to 24% for standard payment methods to attract customers and promote sales.
