I bought a high-end apartment in Hanoi for peace of mind. Then it flooded

When I decided to trade my old house for a modern high-rise, I believed I was escaping the classic urban fears: street flooding, dust, noise, unpredictable weather. I never imagined that disaster could arrive from inside the walls.

It began one ordinary evening while I was preparing dinner. I heard the faint sound of water trickling. At first, I thought it was just a loose faucet. Minutes later, the sound grew into a roar. I rushed to the laundry room, where the washing machine and water heater are connected, and froze in horror.

A hidden water pipe inside the wall had burst. It was spraying water as forcefully as a fire hose, gushing across the room. In seconds, the floor was submerged. The flood spread from the laundry room to the kitchen, then into the living room. I quickly cut the power to prevent electrocution, but I couldn’t shut off the water supply because the valve was locked away in the shared technical cabinet, controlled by building management.

By the time a technician arrived nearly half an hour later, water had seeped through the floor into the unit below and flooded my neighbor’s apartment next door. For the next five hours, I lived in chaos. My neighbors and I tried to scoop water out with buckets, basins, even mops. It was hopeless. Furniture swelled, electronics shorted, mattresses and books turned to sponges. Six workers eventually arrived, breaking into the wall to cut off the water supply and patch the pipe. Only then did the torrent stop, leaving behind destruction and exhaustion.

A woman pours floodwater that has invaded her house on Nguyen Hoang Street in Hanoi following torrential rains in the aftermath of Typhoon Matmo, Oct. 7, 2025. Photo by VnExpress/Dinh Tung

The financial damage was severe: warped wooden floors, ruined furniture, soaked electronics. But the deeper wound was psychological: the helplessness of watching my sanctuary drown, the guilt of seeing neighbors suffer through no fault of their own. Families had to miss work to mop up water dripping through their ceilings. I apologized endlessly, even though the fault lay not with me but with the building’s infrastructure.

When I asked the management office why such a failure could happen in a supposedly high-end complex, the response was dismissive: "Any long-running system can break down." They offered vague advice about applying for partial compensation, but no firm promise of responsibility.

This experience forced me to confront a hard truth about Vietnam’s booming real estate market. Developers spend millions advertising marble lobbies, rooftop gardens, infinity pools... the visible luxuries that attract buyers. But the real lifelines of a building are invisible: water pipes, electrical wiring, pumps, drainage. When these hidden systems fail, the consequences ripple through dozens of households. A single burst pipe can ruin not only one family’s apartment, but also neighbors above, below, and beside.

Unlike storms or floods outside, these disasters come without warning. There is no weather forecast for when your wall will explode with water. And because the systems are centralized, residents often lack the power to act quickly, hampered by locked cabinets, delayed management responses and bureaucratic excuses.

If developers and building managers want to live up to the "luxury" label, it’s not enough to provide shiny facades. True luxury is reliability, prevention and accountability. Regular inspections, transparent maintenance records and quick-response systems should be the standard. Residents who spend billions of dong on an apartment deserve more than hollow slogans.

I used to believe high-rise living offered safety from the city’s floods. Now I know the greater threat may be hidden inside the walls themselves. Until developers take the invisible systems as seriously as the visible ones, luxury living in Vietnam will remain more promise than reality.