Flooding may change the home buying mentality of Saigon people

Experts say heavy rain and the resulting flooding of streets and stagnant water in high-rise buildings and houses over the past few days are making selling homes more challenging.

At the announcement of the HCMC real estate market report for the third quarter of 2016, CBRE Vietnam CEO Marc Townsend received many questions about the consequences of flooding and how it affects real estate.

This expert admitted that the rain and flooding in the past few days certainly affected the psychology of home buyers. This issue will be included in the customer survey list before deciding to buy real estate. Most apartments have basements and this is an issue to pay attention to.

This raises a series of infrastructure issues, in which the challenge for investors is whether the quality and standards of the basements of high-rise buildings are guaranteed or not. Looking further, insurance organizations and banks may also pay special attention to the group of customers buying or developing real estate projects.

Flooding has made home buyers in Ho Chi Minh City more cautious when deciding on real estate. Photo: Tung Duy

However, Mr. Marc Townsend also said that flooding is not only a new phenomenon in Saigon but has existed for many years. People even know clearly which areas are heavily flooded and which areas are lightly flooded when it rains. Therefore, buyers and investors are aware of this and have the choice to develop products or buy products in their own way.

General Director of Viet An Hoa Company, Tran Khanh Quang, assessed that the heavy rains causing flooding and damage throughout Ho Chi Minh City in the past few days are adding to the worries and concerns of home buyers and real estate development businesses.

This expert admits that from the perspective of home buyers, there are currently too many issues to worry about. In addition to location and landscape quality, we need to pay more attention to the living environment, air quality, infrastructure, traffic... and now flooding.

While other criteria can be surveyed quickly and easily, flooding is the most difficult problem to observe, because it requires long-term monitoring and is seasonal (dry season, rainy season, high tide season, etc.). Mr. Quang shares some experiences so that home buyers can pay attention to flooding problems.

First: the city's elevation flows from North to South. District 9, Go Vap, District 12 are often less flooded than other areas.

Second: the ground level of each small area is very different. For example, there are places where the road is higher than the house level, so avoid it.

Third: the ground level is too high compared to the surrounding area, which is often prone to flooding, so if there is heavy rain, it is difficult to access the house because you have to go through deep flooded areas before reaching the gate.

How to observe with the naked eye: look closely at the foundation of the house near where you are standing. If most of the houses around have a high foundation, the road in front of the house is prone to flooding. If the weather is dry and you look under the foot of the wall and see moss and stains running parallel to the foot of the wall, the water level will reach that high when it floods.

Fourth: survey surrounding properties to see past flood levels.

Fifth: If the house is located along a canal, stream or river, you need to pay more attention to the problem of high tides, because the level of damage caused by high tides is much greater than that caused by heavy rain.

According to VNE