Hanoi's student apartments 'hungry' for tenants

Nguyen Thi Tuoi, a 64-year-old woman living in the district, recently finished a five-story building with 41 rooms for rent after a year of construction.

In order to meet the high standards of renters, she decided to fully furnish the rooms with beds, closets, desks, chairs, air conditioners, and private bathrooms. She also installed a fire alarm system that is up to standards inside the building. She plans to fix the price of rent at VND3 million (US$123) per month.

The idea of starting a rental business came to her at the beginning of 2022, when she saw that there was high demand from students of FPT University and Vietnam National University Hanoi, especially because many nearby rentals were nearly full.

The five-story building with 41 fully furnished rooms belonging to Tuoi’s family in Hanoi's Thach That District, the morning of Sept. 12, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/ Quynh Nguyen

"My family had a few hundred square meters plot of land right next to the road, near the schools and local markets, so we decided to invest more than a few billion to build this building. We just hope to make more money to help us when we get older," she said.

However, from the time the students receive their test results to when they finish the admission process, only one out of her 41 rooms is occupied. Tuoi asked her relatives to post advertisements on social media, she lowered the rent, and even let renters stay free for a month, but the situation has not improved.

About 2km away from Tuoi, a seven-story building with 40 rooms owned by Vu Thanh was completed at the end of August. But Thanh’s place is now also suffering the same fate as Tuoi’s.

Thanh built her building according to the mini apartment model. Each room is 30-35 sq.m., fully furnished, with a private bathroom, and a private balcony where tenants can cook. Tenants are allowed to use the elevators, Wi-Fi and washing machine, and fingerprint locks are installed on the doors.

Vu Thanh checks empty rooms in her newly built seven-story building in Hanoi's Thach That District, which remains devoid of renters, the morning of Sept. 12, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Nguyen

The building has been open for business for half a month, but only two customers have paid their deposits, and the occupancy percentage is under 20%. In an effort to bring more customers in, Thanh lowered her rent to VND2.8 million per month and is willing to pay the real estate agents an additional VND500.000-1 million if they can find customers for her.

"Every day, my husband and I have to clean the 40 rooms, and thinking about finding renters is enough to make us sick," she says.

Thanh’s and Tuoi’s families are two of hundreds of families operating rental properties in Thach That District that have fallen on hard times.

Many landlords are handing out flyers, advertising via large billboards in front of universities, and having cars pick up potential customers to tour the rooms for free, all in an effort to jumpstart demand.

Landlords use every method of advertising, from flyers to using electric poles to making large billboards in front of FPT University in hopes of finding renters. Photo by VnExpress/ Quynh Nguyen

Thanh Tung, a 40-year-old taxi driver often found in front of FPT University, said that when students begin to arrive from the end of August to the beginning of September, both sides of the sidewalk were filled with landlords setting up tables to talk to customers.

Some families are not hesitant to pay taxi drivers VND1 million a day to bring customers to their buildings for free or to use the driver’s car to paste their advertisement banners.

Cao Nguyen, a 22-year-old student at FPT University, said that in 2022, he had to arrive one month early to find a place to rent because the number of places available was limited.

"But now, many online groups are filled with advertisements for rooms with low rents," according to Nguyen.

In a private 6,000-member group founded in 2022 to find rooms for rent in the Thach That’s Hoa Lac area, a user can find 70 posts on average per day about private rooms or mini apartments for rent.

Many posts advertise discounts on the first month’s rent as well as many other services for free for half a year, along with other offers, but few people have shown interest.

Many students who have houses in the inner city are willing to go back and forth 40-60km every day to cut back on costs.

Not wanting to spend VND2 million per month on rent, Minh Duc, a 21-year-old who lives in Dong Da District, parks his motorbike at My Dinh bus station and then takes bus number 74 to FPT University before returning home at lunch every day.

"Although I have to wake up early, this route is convenient for me and it also lessens the financial burden for my family," he says.

A survey by VnExpress conducted in the Thach That District towns of Tan Xa, Binh Yen, and Thach Hoa – all of which are near university campuses – revealed that new rental buildings have anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of rooms, 5 to 6 times more rooms than last year.

However, most buildings are only 20% occupied. Meanwhile, many other similar construction projects are in the process of completion.

A government leader in Tan Xa Town said that several years before, the supply of rooms did not meet the high demand of students. Recognizing this demand, many families in the area and other investors came to Hoa Lac to build their properties, causing a sharp rise in supply that has led to the current excess.

Nguyen Van Dinh, president of the Vietnam Association of Realtors, says that this situation of an overabundance of rooms without renters reflects the reality that people are choosing their business models according to trends, without any knowledge of how to predict the market. This has led them to waste their money.

Noticing a potential customer coming to tour the rooms on Sept. 18, Thanh Loan, 50, hurriedly opened the door, making sure to bring her ring of keys to open up any room they wanted to see.

To this day, her four-story building containing 12 rooms that were completed at the beginning of September, has only two rooms occupied.

"Nowadays, you see a rental advertisement every hundred meters or so, so landlords with small rental businesses like my family have to find customers through any way possible," Loan says.