Primary apartment prices up, liquidity down in Q4

The average rate rose to US$3,400 per square meter since no new low-priced apartments entered the market, and all the launches were super luxury, luxury or high-end projects in the Thu Thiem area.

Only 900 apartments were sold in the primary market in the fourth quarter, down 76% from the third quarter, 66% year-on-year and 86-89% from the same period in 2019 and 2020.

It represented the lowest ever quarterly sales, and was due to the fact that the government has tightened corporate bond issuance and bank credit, and legal bottlenecks related to property trading and ownership remained resolved.

As a result, both developers and buyers adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Just before Tet (the Lunar New Year) is the peak period for real estate transactions every year. Tet falls in late January this time.

In the HCMC secondary market, many highly leveraged buyers were willing to accept losses of 10-15% in Thu Duc City and 8-9% in the south, but still struggled to find buyers and few transactions took place.

Property website Batdongsan’s southern regional manager, Dinh Minh Tuan, said the market was frozen because of the difficulty in obtaining bank loans and the high interest rates.

People with cash are also waiting and watching because they expect prices to fall further, he added.