Why is affordable housing scarce?

According to many experts and home buyers, low-cost apartments (around 1 billion VND) are the apartment segment that buyers are most interested in today. This is even more evident as the year-end approaches, the demand for housing increases sharply, especially for this housing segment. However, the supply of this segment is increasingly scarce.

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At a time more than 2 years ago, when the real estate market was still sluggish, developing affordable housing projects was considered the "salvation" of many real estate investment and business enterprises. With prices of around 1 billion VND/unit, with loans supporting up to 50%, even 70 - 80% of the apartment value, the number of real estate projects launched reached tens of thousands of units such as HH Linh Dam, Dai Thanh, Kim Van - Kim Lu apartment complexes... all sold out in a short time when the projects were opened for sale.

But when the market began to recover, attracting many investors back, the affordable housing segment stagnated, losing out to the mid-range and high-end housing segment. The number of commercial apartment projects with prices of around 1 billion VND/unit in Hanoi for sale was not much while the number of houses for low-income people was quite modest.

“According to information on the internet about a housing project in Hoang Mai District, Hanoi, which was just opened for sale not long ago, when I called the contact number on the websites online, the brokers all said that the apartments in this project were almost sold out before the opening date and now I can only buy back the “diplomatic quotas” with a price difference of up to nearly 100 million VND/apartment”, but it is not certain that there are still any left because the number of registered buyers is very large, inversely proportional to the number of apartments”. Ms. Huong (Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi) is one of many people who want to buy cheap houses.

A representative of a real estate investor in Hanoi said: In addition to the reason that many people are concerned about the poor quality of low-cost apartments, the reason why low-cost housing projects have been scarce in recent times is due to the impact of policies, especially credit policies. In particular, it can be said that the 30 trillion VND package being temporarily suspended from disbursement and new loan signing has significantly affected the general psychology of both investors and home buyers.

While home buyers are waiting for new support policies to have easy access to owning a house, for investors, policy changes contain many "risks", forcing businesses to consider and calculate more carefully their plans to implement low-cost housing projects.

High-rise apartments are the choice of middle-income people.

According to Ms. Hien, a real estate broker for HH Linh Dam projects, due to the trend of buying cheap houses (under 1 billion VND) being "hot", small-area apartments as soon as they are released are "held" by investors to sell at a higher price for profit, so it is difficult for buyers to own these apartments directly from the investor. If they buy, they will have to buy them back at a price difference of 80 - 100 million VND/apartment or more depending on the location.

In fact, if in the past, most investors had to reduce selling prices and cut profits to bring low-cost apartment products to customers, now, when the market shows positive signs, investors are competing to increase prices and shift from investing in the mid-low segment to the high-end segment. Therefore, finding new apartment projects with prices under 1 billion VND/unit in Hanoi today is not easy, because the apartment market has established a new price level. Investors are also gradually shifting their investment direction to the high-end segment instead of the low-cost housing segment as before.

It is not that there are no projects under 1 billion VND, but according to real estate experts, while the real housing needs of the majority of people are still concentrated in the low-cost housing segment, the massive development of high-end projects by investors will cause real estate goods to be unbalanced. Not to mention these projects are in remote areas, do not have synchronous infrastructure, and inconvenient transportation, so people with real housing needs cannot buy. Moreover, it is not known when these projects will be completed so that houses can be handed over to people, making customers not dare to spend money.

According to bizlive