It is necessary to remove housing market problems

Could you point out notable points of the HCMC housing market recently?

In the past year, the housing market in HCMC had many positive points. Specifically, along with the development of scale, the housing market continues the trend of restructuring and investment restructuring in order to focus on developing affordable housing segment to meet the demand of the customers. The proportion of affordable apartments still accounts for 74% of all in the market in 2017, similar to 2016.

This is a good sign because investors and enterprises have restructured products strongly in the direction of increasing the number of small and medium sized apartment (1-2 bedrooms). The market also has an important turn to invest in green real estate; water surface, living space with many trees, large water surface, environmentally friendly, have many utilities, services, smart equipments, electricity and water savings, renewable energy.Typical examples are Phu My Hung urban area and Sala urban area. Especially, Ehome 5 (Nam Long Company) achieved EDGE Certificate of IFC, Lang Sen project; Diamond Lotus Riverside (Phuc Khang Company) was built according to the Leed Standard of the US...

Overall, the self-construction area still accounts for the largest proportion, with more than 80% of the total newly built housing. However, housing projects by enterprises tends to increase, including many large projects. According to statistics, the City has 29 large-scale housing projects with total investment of nearly 158 trillion vnd. Especially, despite many difficulties, some enterprises have been very active in taking part in the social security, solving the housing demand for low-income people such as by Construction Trading Company Limited Le Thanh; Nam Long Investment Joint Stock Company; Hoang Quan Company; Thien Phat Company…

What are the limitations of the housing market in HCMC, Sir?

Although there have been many improvements, the housing market in HCMC still has some potential factors that create instability and risks in the coming time, such as; the imbalance of housing products, deviation of supply and demand, lack of supply of social houses, small and medium commercial houses, 1-2 bedrooms, pricing around 1 trillion vnd. Meanwhile, the supply of luxury segment (large house with 3 or more bedrooms) tends to overcome the demand. At present, the number of affordable apartments is 12,495 units, accounting for 29.1% , that does not meet the large demand of officials, civil servants, armed forces, laborers, students, the urban low-income and immigrants of the City.

In addition, the disputes in the apartment buildings continues to increase. The city has 935 high-rise apartment buildings, there are 105 apartments that are in dispute at different levels, in which, there are 9 apartments disputing fiercely for many reasons. Fiercest of these cases are investors who do not implement the handover of the house as commitments, have not done the red book for buyers through for years. In many cases, the investor has mortgaged apartments and the project to the bank without lifting the mortgage, or the project has not enough conditions for checking and completing, but investors have allowed people to live in these safety apartments.

In your point of view, what should we do to solve these issues?

In order for the housing market to develop healthily and sustainably, we must remove the knot of the "real estate market" of land use fees, land clearance, project transfer, credit policies and administrative procedures. Real estate companies are also more professional and responsible. Enterprises must always put the interests of customers above all; keep the prestige, ensure the quality of construction, progress of construction, handover of houses, forming green living space, friendly environment, after-sales service. Along with that, enterprises need to focus on the segment of low housing prices that is a key segment of the market with high liquidity and sustainability, participating in the urban embellishment, program of social housing of the city.

Thank you, Sir!