Investors flee City apartment market

HCM CITY (VNS) — Secondary investors in HCM City are running away from apartment market to cut loss.

However, fewer of them have been successful even though they had cut down price.

With a search on Internet, it is easy to find an individual or secondary real estate companies who advertised to cut down the price by around 30 per cent in order to sell their apartments.

Previously, the Dai Tin A Chau company and An Binh Land company announced to cut down prices of 120 apartments in Hoang Anh River View project by 30 per cent from VND24 million (US$1,1000) per one square metre to VND18.1 million ($860).

It is surprise when not many people care about this although in the past this was a hot project with the price of $2,300 per one square metre by the end of 2008. And, to buy the apartment in this project, investors had to queue up.

Other secondary investors of other famous projects in HCM City such as Sunrise City in District 7 and Sai Gon Pearl in Binh Thanh District are also struggling to look for customers despite they cut down the prices by 10 per cent.

Not only companies but also individuals want to run away from this market to avoid loss. However, they seemed not to get the goal.

Mai Thi Trinh, an individual investor in HCM City, said she had lent money from banks to buy two apartments from two big investors in Tan Binh and Binh Tan districts.

At that time, however, she could not sell her apartments to get the money back because although the time has passed, her apartments have not been handed over.

She really faced difficulties because of being under strong pressure caused by banking loan.

Another investor shared that she poured money to invest in apartments in 2009. Up to date, however, she could not receive house so was not able to sell them despite the price declination.

Specialists said that the price declination at that moment was mostly from secondary investors.

Two or three years ago, these investors had poured money to invest in the hot real estate market to earn benefit, they said.

However, due to frozen market, these investors met financial difficulties. To cut loss and get the money back, the only and the easiest way was to cut down the prices, specialists explained.

However, the situation was not as easy as they thought because many of them had cut down by the same time and the supply exceeded the demand, they added

Specialist To Van Nhu commended that the discount price was now lower than the investment price. This was the best time for consumers who had true demand on apartment, he said. — VNS