The industrial property segment can be considered a bright spot of the domesticmarket for many reasons such as the European Union - Vietnam Free TradeAgreement (EVFTA) coming into effect and plans for the relocation of manymultinational corporations to Vietnam, according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, Vietnam's successful disease control is also an important factor toattract more foreign investment.
Those factors would set a good foundation for the real estate market to developstably in 2021, a representative of the ministry said.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, most businesses in the real estate sectorstarted operating again.
Although the market still faces many difficulties, real estate developers haveoffered solutions to attract customers like changing areas for developingproperty projects to catch up with trends of shifting FDI inflows andurbanisation in localities outside big cities, according to the ministry.
Thanks to product handover activities, project share transfers, assetliquidation and the development of industrial real estate, some real estatebusinesses gained record profits.
Nearly 80 large listed real estate companies achieved or exceeded theirafter-tax profit goals.
The domestic real estate market in the fourth quarter of 2020 stronglyincreased compared to the deep reduction in previous quarters of last year dueto the rapid recovery of the housing and industrial zone segments, helping theproperty sector maintain positive growth for 2020.
In 2020, the real estate sector contributed about 4.42 percent of national GDP.
In 2020, the real estate industry also had changes in businesses. Accordingly,the number of newly-established enterprises was 6,694, down 15.5 percentcompared to 2019, while 978 enterprises completed dissolution procedures.
According to the Ministry of Construction, the total outstanding debt of thereal estate sector in 2020 increased quarter by quarter. Specifically, the debtreached 8.3 trillion VND (361 million USD) in the first quarter and hit 8.5trillion VND in the second quarter and 8.6 trillion VND in the third quarter.As of December 31, 2020, the debt reached more than 8.8 trillion VND.
Besides banking loans, property companies in 2020 attracted capital from othersources such as individual investment capital, remittances and capital fromissuing stocks and bonds.
Regarding supply and transaction of real estate products, the ministry'srepresentative said by the end of the first quarter of 2020, apartmentinventories on the market were estimated at nearly 13,000 units.
In the second and third quarters, the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,as well as problems in terms of mechanisms and policies, affected the progressof implementing investment procedures of property projects and also theprogress of implementing those projects. So, the market did not havesignificant growth of new supply in those quarters.
However, the real estate market was still a safe investment channel soapartment inventories reduced to 6,000 units at the end of the third quarter of2020.
Entering the fourth quarter, the market had a new supply of nearly 30,000apartments and transactions were still quite stable.
The ministry reported that last year, the domestic market had a total inventoryof apartments of about 9,000 units nationwide. Of which, the localities withlarge inventory included Da Nang, Khanh Hoa, Kien Giang and Binh Duong.
Meanwhile, the property market in Hanoi, HCM City, Quang Ninh and localitieswith strong urbanisation such as Can Tho, Long An and Dong Nai maintainedstable development with a moderate level of apartment inventories./.