Brick prices hit record high

From around February to April of the lunar calendar is considered the construction season in the Northern region when this is the time when the most construction projects start in the year. The strong increase in demand makes the construction materials market become more vibrant, especially for fired bricks. However, due to the supply not being able to meet the demand, the selling price increases every day, greatly affecting the progress and pushing up the cost of many projects.

Brick prices hit record high

Currently, the price of tunnel bricks sold at dealers has increased to 1,600 - 1,850 VND/brick, 500 - 800 VND/brick higher than at the beginning of the year. In some areas, the price of bricks has reached 1,900 VND/brick, nearly double, the highest price in many years.

Currently, it is the peak season for housing and civil construction, the demand for bricks is increasing.

Mr. Nguyen Van Toan, a resident of Pham Hong Thai commune (Khoai Chau) shared: My family built a house in March 2025 with an area of ​​about 180m2 of floor space, requiring about 120,000 bricks. When initially calculating, I expected to spend about 130 million VND on bricks, but in reality, it has exceeded 60 - 70 million VND. There were times when the construction team had to take a few days off because they had not yet laid the bricks.

Not only did prices increase, the shortage of goods also made it difficult for people, even if they had money, to buy bricks at the right time. Mr. Do Van Tiep in Hai Thang commune (Tien Lu) said: After many years of saving, I finally had enough money to build a house. But after a short time of building, the bricks were out of stock. I called everywhere and received the answer that they were "out of stock", and had to wait 2-3 days. The project was delayed, workers quit, and additional costs increased, roughly 100 million VND higher than the original estimate.

High brick prices push up construction costs for many families

The skyrocketing price of bricks not only worries people but also affects construction material dealers.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Tuan, owner of a construction materials dealer in Tran Cao town (Phu Cu) said: Since the beginning of the year, the demand for bricks has increased dramatically, pushing prices up continuously, while supplies are scarce. Many customers see high prices, but they cannot proactively source bricks in advance, so they have to temporarily stop construction or reduce the scale of construction. Therefore, although prices are high, the amount of consumption at the dealer has not increased accordingly.

Scarce supply

According to the reporter's investigation, the main reason for the record increase in brick prices is the scarce supply from factories. Many brick manufacturing enterprises are operating at a standstill, limiting investment in expanding production scale due to extremely high input costs.

Brick production at a factory in Tu Dan commune (Khoai Chau)

Mr. Do Dang Trung, representative of Hoang Thanh Company Limited, Dong Ket Commune (Khoai Chau) said: Currently, the price of main raw materials such as soil and coal has increased about 1.5 times compared to 5 years ago, at the same time, the price of electricity and labor costs have also increased steadily every year, causing the cost of brick production to increase significantly... Meanwhile, around mid-2024, the selling price of finished products was at a low point, so we did not risk stockpiling goods, let alone investing capital to expand production scale. Therefore, in early 2025, although the selling price of bricks at times doubled compared to previous years, there was still not enough goods to sell.

Faced with this situation, many investors and contractors are in a dilemma. Mr. Nguyen Van The, a construction contractor in Tien Lu district, said: Currently, I have 6 teams of workers undertaking construction work for about 10 households. Due to the scarcity of bricks, many homeowners have not been able to find a source of supply, so some projects we have had to delay the progress.

Many families, in order to save costs, have been forced to change the design, reduce the area or reduce the quality of materials in the sub-items. This directly affects the durability, aesthetics as well as safety of the project.

Scarce brick supply causes many projects to be behind schedule

Faced with the above situation, the Department of Construction is still maintaining the monthly announcement of construction material prices on the electronic information portal, to help people and businesses update promptly. At the same time, the functional sector strengthens the inspection of the posting and publicization of material prices at business establishments, strictly handling cases of speculation and illegal price increases.

However, in the long term, construction experts believe that in order to stabilize brick prices and ensure that construction activities in the area are not interrupted, there needs to be solutions to support factories such as prioritizing the supply of input materials and strengthening the planning of reasonable clay material areas. Only then can the pressure of stagnant sources be reduced.

Huong Giang - Duong Mien

Source: https://baohungyen.vn/gia-gach-tang-ky-luc-3181257.html