Ho Chi Minh City faces land shortage for low-cost housing

By VnExpress February 22, 2017 | 02:05 am PT

Inside a $4,400 apartment of 30 square meters in Binh Duong Province. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

The city has land to develop suitable low-cost houses for only 1 percent of those in need, its real estate association said.

Ho Chi Minh City could build more houses for low-income earners, but a land shortage means it could only meet demand by 1 percent of those in need, a local newspaper has reported.

The city could follow its neighbor Binh Duong province to build 30-square-meters houses near industrial parks, university complexes and in areas where infrastructure, schools and hospitals are ready, the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper said, citing a proposal by the city's real estate association.

Binh Duong, an industrial hub north of Ho Chi Minh City, in 2015 completed a series of apartments at a cost starting from $4,400 for a 30-sqm house.

At similar conditions, Ho Chi Minh City only has space for around 10,000 apartments, which will serve around 1 percent of those who have demand, the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association said in the proposal to the municipal government.

“Most workers, laborers, low-income people and migrants will not be able to buy such houses,” the newspaper quoted the association as saying.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's commercial center, is home to nearly 13 million people, nearly a quarter of whom are migrants.

As many as 500,000 families have yet to own a house while 81,000 families need cheap houses over the next four years, the newspaper cited a survey by the city’s construction department and Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies as showing.

In the past four years, 16,900 low-cost apartments built by Binh Duong provincial authorities and some 200 companies have served around 17 percent of the province's migrants and factory workers, the newspaper said.