More foreigners should be allowed to buy apartments and more small apartments should be built in order to save the real estate market from its current slump, experts said.

More foreigners allowed to buy apartments could save the slump market

Phan Thanh Mai, General Secretary of Vietnam Real Estate Association, said at a seminar on the issue in Hanoi on October 23 that the prospect for the real estate market in 2013 is relatively gloomy as investors have huge debts with banks and there are millions of square metres of built houses lying empty.

Statistics show that the country currently has over 100,000 unsold apartments while many projects have been suspended due to a lack of finances.

In order to warm up the market, Nguyen Van Duc, Deputy Director of Dat Lanh Real Estate Company said real estate companies should find solutions to survive themselves, instead of only waiting for new policies from the government.

According to Duc, dividing large apartments into smaller ones and reducing prices were key moves to sell existing stock.

He said that big apartments could be split into smaller 50 square metres flats in order to meet demand for people with lower incomes.

A real estate project in Hanoi’s Ha Dong District recently drew public attention when offering a series of apartments at just VND10 million (USD479.15) per square metre.

Meanwhile, Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of the HCM City Real Estate Association ((HoREA) proposed that investors sell apartments to foreigners to increase their revenues.

He claimed that foreigners buying houses in Vietnam doesn’t affect the interests of local people who have low and medium incomes. This could help save hundreds of projects which face sluggish construction.

However, foreigners are facing many difficulties in buying houses in Vietnam due to current regulations. As a result, foreign workersare only allowed to own one house for a 50-year period if they have regular residency papers or documents to prove that they temporarily live in the country for one year, Chau noted.

In order to extend groups of buyers for real estate projects, the government should loosen regulations on the issue, he added.