Real estate prices skyrocket: Workers' dream of settling down is pushed further away

VTV.vn - After 10 years, apartment prices in Hanoi have tripled, pushing the dream of owning a home for many young families further and further away.

The dream of "settling down" has not come true

The State must ensure the right to fair and effective land use for all people; must ensure effective land use, fair and effective land value allocation, avoiding waste; must maximize the efficiency of land resources for national development. This is the guiding viewpoint of General Secretary To Lam . Notably, the General Secretary pointed out a series of warnings about risks when imposing the "market price" mechanism, especially for public assets owned by the whole people such as land.

Risks that can be mentioned include unreasonably inflated land prices, negative social impacts, distortions in resource allocation, and the risk of macroeconomic instability... which are the reasons why many abandoned lands still have sky-high prices. Manufacturing enterprises have difficulty accessing land, while speculators get rich thanks to price differences. And especially for millions of workers - who have a real need to buy land and houses, the dream of "settling down" has yet to become a reality.

Mr. Ngo Xuan Giang and his wife (No. 173 Dang Tien Dong, Dong Da Ward, Hanoi ) once planned to save money to buy an apartment after 10 years to escape the situation of renting a house, because they have a stable income of about 25 million VND per month from the coffee shop. However, the 10-year mark has long passed, and the money saved to buy a house is still not enough.

"The real estate inflation is quite intense. For example, an apartment in Dong Da costs more than 100 million VND per square meter, and 70 square meters is already 7 billion VND. The cost of food, education, transportation for the wife and children... for 20 years, if I don't eat or spend anything, or even don't need to spend money on raising children, I will be able to make ends meet. But I think that's very unreasonable," Giang shared.

As for Mr. Nguyen Van Loi (No. 183 Dang Tien Dong, Dong Da Ward, Hanoi), after many times consulting Hanoi's land price list, he had to give up the idea of ​​buying a house for his son, because the money he had saved from decades of working was not enough to buy another old apartment.

"We were lucky to have been in the subsidized period, the government still allocated 21m2 apartments. So if my son is an engineer and now has a salary of only 7-10 million VND, then a 50m2 apartment would cost 5 billion VND, so it would take decades to buy one?", Mr. Loi confided.

After 10 years, apartment prices in Hanoi have tripled, pushing the dream of owning a home for many young families further and further away. Illustrative photo.

According to Mr. Ta Anh Tuan - Hanoi City: "The phenomenon of price inflation, price hoarding, and price increase in the real estate market has been going on for a very long time. This creates a land rent difference that falls on a group of people who manipulate the price. Meanwhile, people with real needs cannot access it."

"Lending banks also face risks because when lending, people do not value the real value. When handling mortgaged assets or selling them to recover debt, the original loan will not be guaranteed and if a series of banks do this, it will cause huge consequences for the economy ," said Mr. Nguyen Huu Tuan - Hanoi City.

Vietnam is in the golden population phase, with more than 50% of the population under 35 years old, the demand for housing is very large. However, the number of young people who can afford to buy a house still accounts for only a very small proportion of the total housing demand, because the cost of living is increasing, while income increases much slower than the rate of house price increase.

Real estate growth

According to statistics from the Vietnam Institute for Real Estate Market Research and Evaluation, in the period 2014 - 2015, the average apartment price in Hanoi was around 18 - 25 million VND/m2. But at present (2025), after 10 years, the average price has reached 75.5 million VND/m2, at least 3 times higher.

Many high-end projects are still on sale at 100 - 150 million VND/m2. Even up to over 300 million VND/m2.

Regarding the increase in real estate prices over the past 5 years (2021-2025) in some major cities, Hanoi leads the real estate price increase by 112%. Followed by Hai Phong with an increase of 71%. Da Nang with an increase of 53%. Ho Chi Minh City with an increase of 42%.

Need a fundamental strategy to revise land policy

In the past 5 years, the Government has implemented many synchronous solutions, from legal, credit to market management, to bring land prices to a reasonable level. Notably, the completion of institutions and legal corridors with a series of new laws such as: Land Law, Housing Law, Real Estate Business Law, etc. The goal is to make the price mechanism transparent, remove obstacles in investment procedures, and control brokerage and speculation activities.

The government is also pushing to increase supply through the 1 million social housing project by 2030. But land is always a complex issue, lasting for many years and requiring a fundamental strategy to amend policies.

General Secretary To Lam gave the direction: "In a regime of public ownership, there is no correct "market price" if the State does not set the price. Only standard prices established by the State can ensure public interests, prevent speculation and bring the land market back to the orbit of sustainable development."

Mr. Nguyen Van Dinh - Vice President of Vietnam Real Estate Association commented: "We have been in a system that is very confusing in terms of institutions and regulations for too long, which, as the General Secretary said, is the bottleneck of bottlenecks. Implementing a project that takes too long, taking several years, even 10 years to complete, then adding costs to it becomes a high price. Then the land price we are applying is sky-high, used to calculate land use fees, it is clearly terribly inflated. So how can we eliminate those things, we must adjust these groups of problems".

According to Mr. Can Van Luc - Chief Economist of BIDV: "The General Secretary recently also suggested that we should soon study and establish a housing fund and in my opinion this is a very important direction. In particular, we need a fund to develop housing suitable for people's income, especially the middle-income segment".

Bringing land prices back to their true value is an urgent requirement today. Illustrative photo.

"Recently, the number of approved projects is low. Second, the less people are willing to participate, the more actively they will rush into it. The rate of increase in land and housing prices is much higher than people's income, so what we need to do at this time is to have concepts change? We need to adjust to stabilize, not just collect land and housing prices, that will help our market develop sustainably", Mr. Nguyen Chi Thanh - Permanent Vice President of Vietnam Real Estate Brokers Association proposed.

"Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are two cities where real estate prices do not follow any rules. The rules are inflated by investors and even real estate brokers. So we must have a way to manage the social housing system in a more sustainable way, with prices that are affordable for the people," Mr. Tran Ngoc Chinh - Chairman of the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association suggested.

From the perspective of General Secretary To Lam, it can be clearly seen that a market can only develop healthily when it reflects real value, not virtual value. "Price according to the market" does not mean leaving it to the market to manipulate. All economic development policies must put the interests of the people at the center.

Determining land prices in public ownership is the historical responsibility of the State and is also the key for the Vietnamese real estate market to escape the speculative spiral, enter a stable and fair orbit, creating the premise for sustainable development.

Source: https://vtv.vn/bat-dong-san-tang-phi-ma-nguoi-lao-dong-bi-day-xa-giac-mo-an-cu-100251012202640245.htm