Real Estate's Long Hibernation

While Vinhomes powers on

Hello! A warm welcome to all new readers - and a big thank you to whoever shared the newsletter at Saigon South International School last week. This is the Vietnam Weekly, written by reporter Mike Tatarski. Today’s post is exclusively for paying subscribers, while all Friday editions are available to everyone. You can upgrade to a paid subscription to access this and all future exclusive features, as well as the full newsletter archive, for US$5/month or US$50/year below.

This is a big deep dive into the real estate sector, so let’s jump right in.

On to the news.

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Amid a challenging year for Vietnam, the real estate sector stands out as particularly troubled. I’ve covered this in the newsletter before, but the difficulties have hardly improved.

I was therefore surprised to see a July 25 VnExpress article titled ‘Vietnam real estate's stress is over: Fitch Ratings.’ The credit ratings agency had assessed that the credit and liquidity risks facing the sector were improving.

This was followed on the 31st by a story titled ‘Property market not to thaw anytime soon: experts.’ That is a much more realistic take, and today we’ll look at why that is the case, along with sections dedicated to Vinhomes and ongoing high-level discussions of the merits of foreigners buying property in Vietnam.