VietNamNet Bridge - Despite the bearish real estate market in Hanoi, many brokers recommended that it was the good time to buy a house for living.  

Apartments with an area of less than 60 square meters and worth around VND1 billion ($50,000) are attractive to home buyers, while sales of luxury apartments was slow down.

The builder Nam Cuong Group said it sold out 150 apartments with the areas of 54-60 square meters in the Duong Noi Residential Zone in two days only.

“Small apartments are sold well as their prices are reasonable for home buyers. With property price surging too high, apartments worth less than VND1 billion are affordable for young couples, who have middle-income. However, builders are not willing to build these apartments as its profit rate is low,” said the property consulting center Chien Thanh in Hanoi’s Cau Giay District.

Brokers said demand for small houses in Hanoi also increased rapidly. For example, a house with an area of 30-50 square meters in an alley is offered at around VND1 billion, an increase of VND300-400 million from previous months, a broker said.

Home buyers this year preferred to buy small apartments worth VND 1 billion in the outskirts of Hanoi as they could not afford for ones in downtown, which have double prices compared with last year, analysts said.

Property experts predicted Hanoi’s real estate market would likely to drop in the upcoming time.

“The increase in property prices in Hanoi usually begins in downtown, and then spreads to the outskirts. But the market will cool off when property prices in the outskirt starts climbing up,” said Nguyen Trung Vu, director of the The Ky Property Group.

He also expected that the Decree No. 71 would make the property market’s move nationwide unpredictable. The Decree providing guidelines on ownership, housing development, use management of houses, house-related transactions and state management of houses.

Some other experts predicted the property market in the north would retreat on the administration procedures’ improvements.

Nguyen Huu Cuong, chairman of the Hanoi Property Club, said the property administration procedures in the north city were more complicated than in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang.