This represents a 5.2 percent increase compared to the average prices of newly released townhouses, villas and terraced properties in Ho Chi Minh City the previous quarter, real estate firm JLL Vietnam says in its latest market report.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic slowing down, in the HCMC real estate market, Vietnam’s biggest, townhouse prices saw robust growth in the first quarter, reaching $5,017, an increase of 8.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 37.7 percent year-on-year.

The JLL Vietnam report said the reason for the surge is that new townhouse projects released to the market in the second quarter have higher asking prices, given high demand and the pandemic limiting supply. Older projects, which sell for less, had all been sold off by the beginning of the first quarter this year.

Total sales of townhouses in the second quarter rose by more than 50 percent over the previous quarter, totaling 596 units, 65 percent of which came from a major project in District 9. Housing supply is showing a tendency of moving away from the city center, where there is more available land and more greenery, the JLL report said.

The total number of newly townhouses continued to be limited in the second quarter, with just over 600 units, around half the average quarterly supply in 2017 and 2018, but this was up 37 percent over the first quarter this year, which saw just 443 units released to the market.

HCMC’s eastern urban districts continue to dominate new supply.

The report estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 new townhouse units will be released to the market in the final six months of this year. This would bring total primary market supply to 2,500-3,000 units by the end of this year, an increase of 50 percent over 2019.

In particular, the Covid-19 pandemic will likely continue to make long-term real estate more attractive to investors with stable income or those less affected by economic slowdown, who are seeing the assets as a safe haven, the report said.