According to a report recently released by the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA), from now until the 2021 Lunar New Year and the whole of2021, the national real estate market and Ho Chi Minh City will continue to recover and grow again.

HCMC real estate market is showing many signs of recovery and growth.
Photo: T.D

Many signs of recovery

Assessing the real estate market in the first 10 months of 2020, HoREA said that from March to July 2020, due to the impact of the Covid1-9 pandemic, it has exacerbated the inherent difficulties of the market. This leads to a decline in both the supply of projects and the supply of housing products, especially affordable apartments and social housing.

However, according to Mr. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of HoREA, despite being affected by the pandemic, house prices on the primary market are still at high levels. House prices only fell on the secondary market mostly due to resales, accepting losses and fallingprices in the rental real estate market.

In particular, since August 2020, on the basis of the effective control of the pandemic and the efforts of the business community throughout the country, the real estate market has gradually recovered.

The supply of housing projects showed signs of improvement, adding to the supply of housing products in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 2021. In the first nine months of 2020, for small-scale housing projects with 100% of legal residential land, the Department of Construction of Ho Chi Minh City has approved the policy of investment projects in 11 projects, increasing by 10 projects, which is 11 times higher; recognized investors in nine projects, increased nine projects, which is 4.5 times; approved investment projects in 24 projects, increased by 12 projects, which is double compared to the same period in 2019.

At the same time, sent comments to the Department of Planning and Investment on request for approval of investment policies for 45 projects.

At the end of October 2020, the Department of Construction of Ho Chi Minh City announced 10 more housing projects eligible to raise capital to sell houses to be formed in the future, with 9,147 houses, including 8,317 apartments and 830 low-rise houses, adding more housing supply in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Increasing again from the last months of the year

On that basis, HoREA forecasts that from now to the 2021 Lunar New Year and for the whole of2021, the national real estate market and Ho Chi Minh City will continue to recover and grow again due to the positive effect of control measures of the Covid-19 pandemic nationwide.

In particular, Ho Chi Minh City with urban development and urbanization will add resources to the socio-economic development and the city's real estate market to recover and grow faster and more sustainably, both in the medium and long term, with new accelerating forces.

The first is the project to establish Thu Duc city in Ho Chi Minh City, a highly interactive and creative city, a grade 1 city with an economic scale equal to about 7-8% of national GDP, accounting for athird of the GRDP of the city.

Along with that, the city government has a goal of building Ho Chi Minh City into a smart city.

The project to convert four out of five towns into districts in the next 10 years. In addition, Can Gio district is likely to become a "coastal urban, eco-urban and environmental city" in the future.

In addition, the Government has decided for Ho Chi Minh City to convert 26,000 hectares of agricultural land into industrial, commercial, service, urban and residential land for the 2016-2020 period. In fact, it has been shown that 1 ha of industrial, commercial, service and urban land creates more than 100 times more value than 1 ha of agricultural land.

According to data for five years (since July 1, 2015), there are about 14,000 -16,000 people nationwide, which can account for about 0.85% of the total number of houses in commercial housing projects. In which, 10,020 foreign individuals have bought houses in Ho Chi Minh City, accounting for 81.2% of the total number of foreigners buying houses.