Phu My Hung Co. sounded out the market by launching the luxury Chateau villa project with 35 villas and 12 semi-detached having gardens with an area of 510-770 square meters each. Half of these 47 villas have been sold within two months.

Consisting of 103 villas, the Chateau project is set for completion in the first quarter of next year.

Good infrastructure in Phu My Hung new urban area is one of the factors appealing homebuyers although the market is still quiet, Savills Vietnam explained.

Projects having land lots, villas and semi-detached houses are still favoured, making trading in this segment active over the past time.

There are a total of around 3,100 villas and semi-detached houses in HCM City, mostly located in districts 2, 7, 9 and Nha Be District. Meanwhile, land lot projects are in District 8, Binh Chanh and Thu Duc districts.

The price range of a villa in the primary market is quite broad, at VND4.7 billion to VND87 billion, while a semi-detached house is priced between VND2 billion and VND15.5 billion respectively.

According to Savills, high quality, modern facilities, good environment and investors' brands have attracted potential buyers.

Savills expects that there will be around 140 projects of this kind covering a total area of 8,700 hectares and providing 60,000 houses for the market over the next eight months.

The Saigon Times Daily - February 1st, 2012

Vietnam developers advised to cut home prices further

Further price cuts are inevitable if developers want to woo homebuyers back to the market, news website Vietnamnet cited industry insiders as saying.

Le Chi Hieu, vice chair of the HCM City Real Estate Association, said property developers have to change to survive these tough economic times. The first steps are to lower prices and cooperate with other companies, he said.

In the long term, real estate developers should seek investment from various capital sources instead of depending on banks for funds, Hieu said.

Nguyen Van Duc, deputy director of HCM City-based Dat Lanh Real Estate Company, agreed that developers have to accept low prices, and even losses. At the same time, they should review their business strategies to cut construction costs, he added.

According to Vietnamnet, home prices went down in 2011 but the cuts were not enough to drive buyers back to the market. In some cases, the very small price cuts were merely marketing ploys, it said.

In Hanoi, only about 3,600 real estate purchases were made during the first three quarters of last year, Vietnamnet reported.

Nguyen Quoc Hiep, chair of GP Invest, said many real estate companies have already gone bankrupt, though official announcements have yet to be made.

As sales dropped and bank loans were due, tSTC companies could not afford to stay in the market, he said.

Construction minister Trinh Dinh Dung has said the market could continue to slump in the first half of this year. He said the bright spot of the market in 2012 will be the low-income housing segment.

Thanh Nien - February 3, 2012