$1,000 monthly income required to buy home in HCMC: analyst

That would be sufficient to pay the mortgage for a 50-square-meter apartment with one bedroom situated around 15 kilometers from downtown, Vo Hong Thang, deputy CEO of property research company DKRA Group, said.

The person needs to have an income of VND35-40 million to be able to buy a 60-70-square-meter apartment, the company, which has been collecting data from mortgage-paying customers in the city for the last five years, said.

"For individuals with income of less than VND25 per month, buying a home can be a burden due to the large debt," Thang said, advising young people to borrow not more than 40% of a property’s value.

There are many people migrating from other provinces to HCMC to make a living, and have a strong demand for buying a home, he pointed out.

So the city should have a consistent loan policy for five or 10 years to aid first-time homebuyers, he said.

Phan Cong Chanh, CEO of property developer Phu Vinh, said the current loan interest rate of around 13% is too high for most people who want to own a home.

In the last three years many people have seen their incomes plunge due to the Covid pandemic and resultant economic challenges, and to many buying a home has now become a pipe dream, he said.

Affordable apartments priced at around VND30 million per square meter are disappearing from the HCMC market and first-time homebuyers need to look at the VND40-million segment and higher, he said.

There are apartments priced at VND2 billion available in the suburbs, and young people could get loans of 40% of the cost for 30-35 years, he added.