However, clear recovery will begin only from
the second quarter in Ho Chi Minh City,” said Luong Tri Thin, chairman
of Dat Xanh Real Estate Construction and Services Joint Stock Company.
“Potential home buyers are hesitating, while investors and developers
are still suffering from capital constraints and watching the
government’s macro-economic policies,” Thin said. Thin said demand in Ho
Chi Minh City was not being met and buyers would probably come back to
the market in the second or third quarters.
Doan Chi Thanh,
director of the Real Estate Gate Limited Company, said: “We expect the
market to go up in the next two months, particularly with the dominance
of the low and medium-priced housing sector, and in regards to
apartments for singles and couples.”
Accordingly, the suburban
districts of Thu Duc, Go Vap, Binh Tan, Tan Binh, District 12 and Hoc
Mon would be of interest due to reasonable prices and improved
infrastructure, Thanh said. Also, the government’s decision to ban the
operations of nearly 20 domestic gold bourses by the end of March in a
bid to prevent gold transactions’ negative influences on the country’s
monetary policies and social stability will hopefully bring in more
capital to the city’s real estate market in the future.
“The move
has sparked a new channeling of capital from gold investments into the
property market,” said Phan Trung, chairman of Grand Capital Limited. He
said that real gold traders would soon move their capital back to
investments, so property would be attractive to them, as the stock
market would undergo more uncertainty under pressure to stabilise
inflation and the financial markets.
Also, the property market
was forecast to begin its upward spiral with many opportunities to
appear, Trung said. He said that short-term investments into potential
and central-business-district properties would be favourable to
investors. Ho Chi Minh City’s real estate market is said to be the most
developed market in the country, leading market trends throughout
Vietnam.
However, according to many domestic real estate
experts, Hanoi will be recovering a little ahead of the southern city,
as the capital will see more development after its 2009 expansion.