The price of apartments in Hanoi has been increasing rapidly recently, in many places increasing by hundreds of millions of dong per month, but in reality, selling them is not easy, because the market shows signs of a virtual "fever".
Ms. Tran Thi Hai Anh (Ha Dong District, Hanoi) said that in 2019, she and her husband bought an 80m2 apartment for 2.5 billion VND. After 5 years of living, her family wanted to move to a ground-level house to have a more comfortable and spacious space. This need happened at the time when apartment prices were continuously increasing, making her and her husband very happy.
" I followed the apartment group and saw that the house prices were increasing too much. My apartment is now nearly 5 billion VND, double the price when I bought it. That's why my husband and I discussed selling the house quickly, then buying a house on the ground, if we don't have enough, we can borrow from the bank. If we don't sell quickly, the apartment prices may cool down, so we can easily lose the good deal, " said Ms. Hai Anh.
Thinking is doing, the couple asked a broker to sell their apartment with the hope of selling it soon and getting the same price as the market. While waiting to sell the house, Ms. Hai Anh also urgently looked for a new house. After more than 1 month of looking for a house, she deposited 200 million VND for a 4-storey house of 40m2 in an alley in Yen Nghia area (Ha Dong district) with a price of more than 6 billion VND.
Wanting to sell old houses at high prices to make a fortune, many people are stuck because of the "virtual fever" market. (Illustration photo).
" If we sell the apartment for 5 billion as planned, my husband and I will only have to borrow about 1 billion from the bank, while we can move to the ground floor, the house has 3 spacious bedrooms, the whole family can live comfortably, " said Ms. Hai Anh.
However, what worries Ms. Hai Anh the most is that even though she has advertised her apartment for sale at a price 300 million VND cheaper than the market price, after a whole month, her apartment still has no customers.
" When I first posted the sale, there were brokers who brought customers to see it, but it has become less and less and now it is completely quiet. Because I was so impatient, I reduced the price by another 200 million VND to quickly sell the old apartment. But 1.5 months have passed, and my apartment is still unsold. I was really surprised because according to the information I have, the market is very hot, apartments are very hot. However, the prices of similar apartments to mine in the brokerage group are all posted for sale at 5.3 - 5.5 billion VND, while my house is posted for 4.8 billion VND but still has no buyers. It turns out that all the information about the market is just virtual, just a smokescreen trick, " Ms. Hai Anh questioned.
The old house has not been sold yet, while the payment deadline for the new house is approaching, Ms. Hai Anh is worried when faced with two choices: either borrow nearly 6 billion VND from the bank to buy the new house, or forfeit the deposit of 200 million VND.
" If we borrow from the bank, the principal and interest payments will be too large for my husband and I to bear. Therefore, there is a high risk that we will have to lose the 200 million VND deposit for the new house and wait until we sell the old house and then consider it later, " said Ms. Hai Anh.
Like Ms. Hai Anh, Mr. Le Van Lam (Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi) said that everywhere people say that house prices are increasing, but in reality, I think it is a virtual increase. House prices have increased, but not to the extent that brokers say.
Specifically, Mr. Lam said that he has a 90m2 apartment on Minh Khai Street. According to information posted by brokers on the market, his apartment is priced at about 7 billion VND. However, he has been selling it for 6.5 billion VND for many months and still has no buyers.
Mr. Lam planned to invest in a coffee shop in Dong Da district, but the investment amount was nearly 2 billion VND, so he wanted a house to get the money to invest. Thinking that the house price was high, if he sold it at a lower price, it would probably "go away" quickly, so he did not hesitate to deposit 100 million VND for rent, the deposit period was 2 months.
However, after 2 months, his apartment still could not be sold, so he had to regretfully lose the deposit for the coffee shop, waiting for the apartment to be sold to decide what to do next. " I thought that if I sold it cheap, I would close the deal quickly. But the market is now full of fake information, so even though I advertised it cheaper, I still couldn't sell it, " said Mr. Lam.
Commenting on the current apartment market, Mr. Pham Duc Toan, CEO of EZ Property Company said: " After many years of participating in the real estate market, I have never seen apartment prices, especially in Hanoi, as "virtual" as they are now. In just over half a year, an apartment I asked for at the end of 2023 cost about 2.3 billion, but now it has even increased to nearly 3 billion VND ".
According to Mr. Toan, the increase in housing prices is the result of many factors converging at the same time, especially people's psychology. In the years 2019 - 2020 and before, people's psychology poured into ground-level houses and townhouses to have privacy and freedom, so the apartment market at that time was quite gloomy. But at the present time, when the apartment housing model brings more modern and richer utilities and ecosystems, people's demand poured into the apartment segment massively.
In addition to the psychology of changing residence, there is also the psychology of "greedy for profit". People "hold" land to continue waiting for higher prices to make a profit. This also contributes to the surprisingly "high" price of land and apartment buildings.
Explaining the phenomenon of Hanoi apartment prices increasing rapidly in a short period of time, Mr. Vuong Duy Dung, Deputy Director of the Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management, Ministry of Construction, said that through synthesis and analysis, it was found that the real estate supply and input construction costs were only one of the reasons for the increase in real estate prices in some areas and localities in recent times.
The increase in real estate prices is also due to the phenomenon of "creating virtual prices" and "inflating prices" by speculators and individual brokers. They take advantage of people's lack of knowledge and investing according to the crowd psychology to make profits.
According to Mr. Dung, these people are individuals who work as freelance brokers, do not have real estate brokerage certificates, are weak in expertise, have limited legal knowledge, leading to a situation of opportunistic business, colluding to set prices, inflating prices compared to actual values, and manipulating the market. That causes damage to customers and reduces the transparency of the real estate market.
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