Many difficulties happened in the real estate market 2019, including low demand, frauds and tightening of credit. Frauds were rampant, with unscrupulous developers selling projects despite lacking even construction licences.

For instance, in September, the HCM City police found that Alibaba Company had bought 600 hectares of agricultural land and sold land plots in it by claiming it was urban housing land though authorities had not given approval for conversion of the land use purpose.

Elsewhere, the resort property segment saw the first failures of the hybrid condominium¬hotel model operating as a commercial hotel though the units are individually owned. In November the developer of Cocobay, a large condotel complex in central Da Nang City, reneged on its pledge to pay guaranteed returns to investors, leaving many who had taken loans to buy units in the lurch. Falling supply was also an issue in the real estate sector, a trend that began at the end of 2018 and is expected to drag on until 2022, causing constant shortages in the market, experts said.

However, despite many challenges real estate enterprises would also have a lot of opportunities in 2020, especially those with large unencumbered land parcels, projects under development and low debt levels. Duong Thuy Dung, CEO of CBRE, said supply would significantly improve this year in terms of both the number of projects and number of apartments for sale, many of which were delayed last year because of legal requirements. 

Read more at: VIETNAM NEWS.