Vietnam unreal estate

Returning to one of my all-time favourite head scratchers, The Guardian reports,

The hundreds of bustling market stalls that make up Ho Chi Minh City's Ben Thanh market could not be more different from the sparkling shopfronts of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or London's Bond Street. But data released by the tax office in Vietnam's commercial centre shows that shop space in the 147-year-old market is changing hands for probably more than anywhere else on the planet.

Prices in Ben Thanh have jumped about 40% in the past two years to 230 taels of gold, or £91,000, a square metre, Reuters said yesterday.

The prices even eclipse Tokyo's Ginza shopping district, long-reputed to be the world's priciest shopping district, where retail space sells for £69,000 per square metre. And this despite an average annual salary in Vietnam of £338. via No StarWhere.

We nattered about this long ago in the comments. And I'll repeat; it's not Johny Foreigner buying land, it's Vietnamese. A few months before I left Vietnam I met a Vietnamese woman in her late twenties who paid $1,000,000 for a pokey wee shop on Dong Du street. She paid in cash. Of course.

Comments

[Mr. No Star Where]

Yeah, I've read that real estate in Hanoi is more expensive than parts of Tokyo. Not all real estate in Vietnam is this expensive nor do most Vietnamese pay what a New Yorker pays in rent BUT there are plots of land that are incredibly expensive, especially in the centers of overcrowded cities like Hanoi/HCMC.

I talked to a guy who runs a restaurant close to downtown HCMC but hardly on Dong Khoi, and he was paying $5,500 for rent each month. When beers cost a dollar or two and main course three or four, how does one pay for rent, salaries, equipment, etc?

That's my question. I can see that land costs X amount of dollars but how do they get a return on their investment? Sell the land again in a couple of years?

[Kimson]

I should ask my aunt about this, as she's a real estate "agent" in Saigon, but I'm not sure if my Vietnamese is good enough to ask that kind of question.

[Garry]

A local hotelier told me back in autumn 2003 that any single building on De Tham would run $1/2 million USD minimum. I'm sure it's higher now.

Down on the Delta it's of course cheaper. Wifey's sister just bought a 10x30 meter lot with a two story brick/concrete house for $25,000 USD. Everyone says she got it dirt cheap (this is a quasi-residential part of town down in An Giang province). And the Viet Khieu are moving in as well. Last time in Chau Doc I saw what looked like a conventional American townhouse development underway. Don;'t know what the prices were but was told it was mainly for the VK. There are some Viet Khieu investors who want to do a big project in Can Tho as well.

[cd_gen2004]

Gary..
It's "Viet Kieu" not "Viet Khieu" By my humble knownlege of course. :)

[m]

wow. that sounds insane. the government in vietnam is really corrupt so I guess it makes sense why certain things are so expensive (with bribes and such)