Wanting to sell old houses at high prices to make a fortune, many people are stuck because of the 'virtual fever' market.

Apartment prices in Hanoi have been continuously rising sharply recently, increasing by hundreds of millions of dong per month in many areas, but in reality, selling them is not easy at all, due to signs of an artificial "boom" in the market.

Ms. Tran Thi Hai Anh (Ha Dong district, Hanoi) recounted that in 2019, she and her husband bought an 80m2 apartment for 2.5 billion VND. After living there for five years, her family wanted to move to a house on the ground floor for a more comfortable and spacious living environment. This need coincided with a period of continuously rising apartment prices, which made her and her husband very happy.

" I've been following the apartment prices in a group chat and I've noticed they've skyrocketed. My apartment is now worth nearly 5 billion VND, double what we paid for it. That's why my husband and I decided to sell it quickly and buy a house on the ground floor. If we're short on funds, we can take out a bank loan. If we don't sell quickly, apartment prices might cool down, and we could easily miss out on this bargain, " said Ms. Hai Anh.

Without hesitation, the couple hired a real estate agent to advertise their apartment, hoping to sell it quickly and at a market price. While waiting for the house to sell, Ms. Hai Anh also urgently searched for a new home. After more than a month of searching, she put down a deposit of 200 million VND for a 4-story, 40m2 house in an alley in the Yen Nghia area (Ha Dong district) priced at over 6 billion VND.

Many people, wanting to sell their old houses at a high price to make a fortune, are stuck because of the — Many people, hoping to sell their old houses at a high price to make a fortune, are stuck due to the "speculative bubble" in the market. (Illustrative image).

" If we sell the apartment for 5 billion VND as planned, my husband and I will only need to borrow about 1 billion VND from the bank, while we'll be able to move to a house on the ground floor with three spacious bedrooms, where the whole family can live comfortably ," Ms. Hai Anh expressed.

However, what worries Ms. Hai Anh the most is that even though she has advertised her apartment for sale at a price 300 million VND lower than the market price, after a whole month, she still hasn't found a buyer.

" When I first put it up for sale, there were brokers bringing potential buyers, but that number has decreased, and now it's completely silent. Because I was so anxious, I reduced the price by another 200 million VND to sell the old apartment quickly. But 1.5 months have passed, and my apartment is still unsold. I'm really surprised because, according to the information I have, the market is booming, apartments are in high demand. Yet, similar apartments in the brokers' group are all listed for 5.3 - 5.5 billion VND, while mine, advertised at 4.8 billion VND, still hasn't found a buyer. It turns out all the market information was just a smokescreen, " Ms. Hai Anh questioned.

With her old house still unsold and the payment deadline for her new house approaching, Ms. Hai Anh is worried as she faces two choices: either borrow nearly 6 billion VND from the bank to buy the new house, or forfeit her 200 million VND deposit.

" If we take out a bank loan, the monthly principal and interest payments would be too large for my husband and me to bear. Therefore, there's a high risk we'll lose the 200 million VND deposit for the new house and have to wait until we sell the old one to figure things out ," said Ms. Hai Anh.

Similar to Ms. Hai Anh, Mr. Le Van Lam (Hai Ba Trung district, Hanoi) said that everyone is talking about rising house prices, but in reality, he believes it's an artificial increase. House prices have increased, but not to the extent that real estate agents are claiming.

As a specific example, Mr. Lam said that he owns a 90m2 apartment on Minh Khai Street. According to real estate agents, his apartment is priced at around 7 billion VND. However, he has been trying to sell it for 6.5 billion VND for months without success.

Mr. Lam planned to invest in a cafe in Dong Da district, but the investment amounted to nearly 2 billion VND, so he wanted to use the money from the property to fund the investment. Thinking that house prices were high and that selling it cheaper would sell quickly, he didn't hesitate to put down a 100 million VND deposit for the premises, with a deposit period of 2 months.

However, after two months, his apartment still hadn't sold, so he reluctantly lost his deposit for the coffee shop and decided to wait until he could sell the apartment before deciding what to do next. " I thought selling it cheaply would close the deal quickly. But the market is full of fake information now, so even if I advertised it cheaper, I still couldn't sell it ," Mr. Lam said.

Commenting on the current apartment market, Mr. Pham Duc Toan, CEO of EZ Property, said: " Having participated in the real estate market for many years, I have never seen apartment prices, especially in Hanoi, as inflated as they are now. In just over half a year, an apartment that I inquired about at the end of 2023, which cost around 2.3 billion VND, has now even increased to nearly 3 billion VND ."

According to Mr. Toan, the increase in housing prices is the result of many factors converging at the same time, especially people's psychology. Before 2019-2020, people preferred detached houses and townhouses for privacy and freedom, so the apartment market was quite sluggish. But now, with apartment housing offering more modern and diverse amenities and ecosystems, there is a surge in demand for apartments.

Besides the desire to relocate, there's also the "greed for profit" mentality. People are hoarding land, waiting for even higher prices to profit from the difference. This also contributes to the unexpectedly inflated prices of houses and apartments.

Explaining the phenomenon of rapidly increasing apartment prices in Hanoi in a short period of time, Mr. Vuong Duy Dung, Deputy Director of the Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management, Ministry of Construction, said that, through synthesis and analysis, it has been found that the supply of real estate and input construction costs are only some of the reasons for the increase in real estate prices in some areas and localities in recent times.

The high real estate prices are also due to the phenomenon of "artificial pricing" and "price manipulation" by speculators and brokers. They exploit people's lack of knowledge and herd mentality in investing to profit.

According to Mr. Dung, these individuals are freelance brokers without real estate brokerage licenses, lacking professional expertise and having limited legal knowledge. This leads to unscrupulous business practices, collusion to manipulate prices, and artificially inflating prices above their actual value, thus manipulating the market. This harms customers and reduces the transparency of the real estate market.

Chau Anh

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