VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of luxurious villas worth millions of dollars in Hanoi, which have been left deserted, have reluctantly become the places for street noodle shops or car cleaning workshops.

The Van Khe new urban area, located in the center of the Ha Dong district is considered an ideal place for living with its comfortable utilities and the modern design. However, the occupancy rate in the area remains very low.

On Le Van Luong Road, one can see a lot of half-finished villas and houses, left deserted and located next to the popular beer and bun cha (noodles and grilled meat) shops. The CT3 block is facing a row of 20 villas, but only four of them have people inside, while the others have been either left deserted or leased to others.

Thu, the owner of a bun cha shop here said that the leasing fee here in Van Khe urban area is “dirt cheap,’ just VND4-10 million a month.

“The landlords don’t intend to sell the villas and houses, because the prices have dropped dramatically by 50 percent. Therefore, they are leasing the houses for money while waiting for the prices to increase in the future,” Thu explained.

Thu herself rents a house at VND10 million a month and re-leased half of the house to another for VND4 million.

A half of the house is still large enough for Thu to run the bun cha shop. While a bun cha shop in the inner city covers an area of 10 square meters only, Thu’s shop is 30 square meters large.

The leased land area is large enough for both the shop and accommodation. Thu’s bedroom is on the third floor, where there is only one bed and some clothes.

Long, the man, who rent the other half of the house to set up a motorbike cleaning shop, said the real estate crisis has brought luck to him. “The rents have become so low here. It is much lower than the rent for street front houses,” he explained.

Long said that he receives some 10 clients, who bring cars and motorbikes to have them cleaned. The water from the cleaning, the oil from cars and motorbikes submerged the floor. As such, the atmosphere of the luxurious villa was the mixture of the odor from the roast meat of Thu’s shop and from the oil and petrol of Long’s shop.

In the Mo Lao urban area in Ha Dong district in Hanoi, which has been well known for the Lang Viet Kieu Chau Au (the European Viet Kieu village) developed by the Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) billionaires, there are numerous street rice shops.

Khoa, the owner of a rice shop, said he mainly serves the construction workers from the construction projects nearby. The shop is located in an unfinished house which Khoa has rent from a landlord at VND6 million.

The luxurious villas have become the ideal places for the poor to accommodate. It’s unclear where the landlords are now, but they never turn up to drive the poor people away. Therefore, more and more homeless people have congregated there to live.

Tien Phong’s reporters contacted H, one of the landlords, and found out that H was a real estate trader. He said he spent tens of billions of dong to buy 5 land plots in the areas, planning to build houses on the land for reselling. However, the houses have not been sold over the last 3 years.

Manh Ha