Land brokers continuously ask to buy apartments at high prices. When the owner agrees to sell, the brokers disappear.

Brokers offer to buy houses at high prices, but the owner agrees and then "disappears"

Speaking to Dan Tri reporter, Ms. Nguyen Quynh (living in Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi) said that her family is living in an 81m2 apartment with 3 bedrooms that was bought 2 years ago for 3.5 billion VND.

In August, although she had no need to sell her house, Ms. Quynh continuously received calls from brokers asking to buy the house at a price as high as 5.5 billion VND. The broker even firmly affirmed: "If you agree to sell, tomorrow we will bring customers to put down a deposit."

After many times Ms. Quynh refused to sell, recently she was contacted by a broker again and asked to buy. This time, the broker said that if there was goodwill, the price could be increased by 100-200 million VND and there would be customers who would deposit immediately. "Many times when I was offered like that, I also felt sorry, discussed with my husband that if I got the price like that, I would sell this house to move down to buy a more spacious house. The last time the broker contacted me, I agreed to sell and told them to bring customers.

However, after waiting for nearly 2 weeks, no broker has brought any customers, nor has there been any contact," said Ms. Quynh.

Similarly, Mr. Nguyen Van Ha (living in Hoang Mai, Hanoi) said that at the end of 2022, he bought a 70m2 apartment with 2 bedrooms for 3 billion VND. Last September, his family intended to sell it to change to a larger apartment. He posted the information on some real estate buying and selling groups for reference.

An apartment building in Hanoi (Illustration: Tran Khang).

Immediately after that, a series of brokers contacted Mr. Ha, offering to buy for customers at 4.8 billion VND. If they agreed, the customers would come and put down a deposit immediately. "The price the broker offered also surprised me. I agreed to sell but it's been a week and no one has come," Mr. Ha said.

Expert: Tricks of a group of people with impure intentions

According to Mr. Vu Thanh Tung - owner of a real estate brokerage in Hanoi - brokers continuously calling homeowners to ask to buy apartments at sky-high prices but not showing up is actually not uncommon in the market, especially during the current hot apartment market.

In fact, brokers do this to make homeowners think that the apartment is very "hot"; prices increase very quickly so that homeowners can stop the sale plan, limiting supply. Besides, homeowners can push prices even higher, making the market even "hotter".

On the buyer's side, seeing that all the homeowners are increasing their prices, they will think that if they don't buy quickly, the price will increase further, making it difficult to buy, thereby speeding up the process of paying for the house faster.

Mr. Nguyen Van Dinh - Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Realtors (VARS) - assessed that in the recent period, apartment prices have increased abnormally, especially in Hanoi.

Mr. Dinh believes that this phenomenon is certainly influenced by interest groups while the economic context, market as well as people's income have not recovered. "Housing prices are high, but transactions are not appearing, this could be a trick of an investment group with unclear purposes," Mr. Dinh frankly assessed.

According to him, these interest groups are able to carry out price-inflating tricks based on the fact that the supply of apartments is problematic. In recent years, the market has not had any new projects approved for investment licenses. Projects on the market are mainly old projects and are bought and sold again. The supply is both lacking and of poor quality, the supply for people and low-income people is very little, and the product structure is not suitable.

Ms. Pham Thi Mien - Deputy Director of the Vietnam Real Estate Market Research and Evaluation Institute - said that besides the results from actual supply and demand, the market has also shown signs of "heating up". This situation is reflected in land speculation, pushing up housing prices, and the emergence of non-transparent real estate transactions.

Many small investors enter the market for speculative purposes, causing real estate prices to rise unreasonably. Signs of "heating up" are also evident in the apartment segment, with the asking price of transferred apartments increasing, due to the "assistance" of some speculative groups.

The Ministry of Construction also said that recently, some speculative groups, investors and individuals operating in real estate brokerage have disrupted market information to "inflate prices" and "create virtual prices"... These groups take advantage of people's lack of knowledge to manipulate psychology, attracting investment according to crowd psychology for profit.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/bat-dong-san/co-dat-lien-tuc-hoi-mua-chung-cu-gia-cao-chu-dong-y-ban-thi-co-mat-hut-20241014160302678.htm