The HCM City housing market will continue to grow this year, especially the VND1 billion (US$44,000) condo segment, the HCM City Real Estate Association (HoREA) has predicted.

A corner of Phu My Hung urban area in HCM City 

Le Hoang Chau, HoREA Chairman, said the VND1 billion segment will be the most liquid while the luxury segment will be restructured in line with actual demand.

Authorities will continue to cool down the land and condotel segments, it said.

In the second half of the year developers will continue to upgrade the city’s infrastructure, rebuilding old apartments, joining in resettlement programmes and developing smart urban areas, it said.

They will strengthen relations with foreign investors to raise more funds, it said.

In the first five months of this year the property market was slightly down compared to the same period last year, with only 29 projects launched, almost 10% fewer.

Nearly 9,200 housing units were put in the market, 8,690 of them apartments and the rest houses, down by more than 44%.

The slowdown had spread to the apartment market, with the luxury segment declining by 26%, the mid-price segment by 32% and the low-end segment by 70 %.

Land prices shot up, especially in District 9, though of late they have levelled off.

Fifteen M&A deals were done.

Property attracted the third highest amount of FDI.

According to HoREA, developers face challenges in getting loans since banks are tightening credit on instructions from the State Bank of Vietnam.

The association wants the Government to control two main factors that affect the market: the imbalance between demand and supply in the luxury apartment and condotel segments and the disinformation spread by brokers to manipulate land prices.

VNA