The last quarter of year is usually the most eventful period, but the apartment for sale market in HCM City continued to witness low transactions ratio over the quarter, according to Mr. Colin Luff, Associate Director - Head of Valuation & Advisory Services at Knight Frank Vietnam in its report on real estate market in HCM City released on January 12.

Accordingly, the apartment prices in HCM City's secondary market in Q4 2011 continued to fall by 10% from the previous quarter in the city's districts.

The main cause was attributable to the low liquidity of the market and many investors are in need of money to pay for bank loans, which could put pressure on the volume of unsold inventory on the primary market.

Regarding the supply, in Q4 2011, HCM City had about 2,200 apartments being launched to the market, of which, the popular segment accounted for 66%. The apartments priced from 10 million dong to 17 million dong per square meter continued to attract the interest of many buyers.

The majority of new supplies being offered on the market in Q4/2011 were from outlying districts such as Binh Tan, Nha Be, Tan Phu, Binh Chanh and Thu Duc.

In Q4 2011, some primary projects reduced the price by 20-30% and gave many other supports but there were relatively few transactions in the market due to psychological expectations of the buyers.

According to Knight Frank Vietnam experts, investors like Phat Dat Co, Novaland and international companies such as Capitaland and Indochina Land are aiming at the middle and popular segments to meet the real demand from most buyers.

Source: Vietbiz24