Apartment prices surged 27.5% in Q2 2019 from a year earlier, to an average of US$2,582 per sq. m, according to Jones Lang La Salle Vietnam. Likewise, in Hanoi, the capital, the average price of apartments rose by 4.9% y-o-y to US$1,493 per sq. m. in Q2 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent restrictions imposed, housing activity were down during Q2 2020. In HCMC, apartment sales fell by 74% y-o-y in Q2 2020 while it dropped 43% in Hanoi.
Supply plunged 64% y-o-y in HCMC and by 6% in Hanoi over the same period. Vietnamese economy grew by a miniscule 0.36% in Q2 2020 from a year earlier, a sharp deceleration from the prior year’s 6.73% growth, as economic activity was hampered by the coronavirus outbreak, according to the country’s General Statistics Office. It was the slowest y-o-y expansion since the series began in 2000. IMF forecasts that Vietnam’s economic growth will slow to 2.7% this year, down from 2019’s robust growth of 7%.