Numerous leaflets are being posted on the streets to advertise home selling. If a luxurious house in urban projects was offered at tens of billions of VND a few years ago, a 200 square metre luxurious house is sold at only VND1.6 billion. Even so, many people still said the price is a bit high compared to the next-door projects.

Song Da Urban and Industrial Zone Investment and Development JSC has also lowered the prices for many of its properties. Price for a square metre of land in the Nam An Khanh urban project has been lowered from VND50 million to VND17-21 million. However, home buyers have not moved in yet because the infrastructure is incomplete.

Luxurious housing projects are competing with apartment blocks

Director of Commercial Real Estate Services (CBRE) Le Minh Dung said housing prices in general are dropping. Reports from CBRE said due to the economic difficulties and redundancy of housing projects, luxurious houses' investors are pushing down the prices in order to compete with the middle class housing sector.

According to the Ministry of Construction's statistic, as of late February, the total value of unoccupied houses in Vietnam reached over VND92.6 trillion of which VND9 trillion is in Hanoi. Most of these houses are located far from city centre and have incomplete infrastructure such as Nam An Khanh or Gamuda. Many urban projects including Lideco, Van Phu and An Hung are also suffering with thousands of homes being abandoned for a long time.

Despite the harsh situation, investors still show optimism and hope that transactions will increase along with economic recovery.