HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Foreigners have bought some 16,000 housingproperties across the country since they were allowed to do so in 2015, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association(HoREA).

Their number is increasing, especially of those buying in HCM City, with mostbuyers coming from mainland China, Japan, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea.

Vingroup, Novaland, Phu My Hung, CBRE, and Hung Thinh sold around 10,571 of theunits. HCM City has accounted for about 80 percent of all their purchases.

Many apartments in major projects in HCM City like the luxury Centennial Bason,The Grand Manhattan and Alpha City in District 1, where prices range between6,000 USD and 10,000 USD per square metre, have been bought by foreigners.

Developers need to work with foreign real estate agencies to look for foreignbuyers and investors, experts said.

Companies like Khang Dien, Novaland, Vingroup, and Him Lam Land work with TVCCommunication Company (Singapore) to sell apartments they build to foreignbuyers.

Such cooperation is especially useful to sell in the high-end and luxuryapartment segments, which attract foreign buyers, especially Chinese, HoREAsaid.

Some luxury projects in HCM City have even sold the maximum allowed 30 percentof their units to foreigners.

Thus, at projects such as Gateway Thao Dien, Nassim and Thao Dien Pearl inDistrict 2 foreigners have to instead sign 50-year rental contracts.

In the case of townhouse projects, foreigners can buy up to 10 percent or 250units.

HoREA believes that this limit is low and inappropriate, for some places with alarge concentration of foreigners, such as Phu My Hung New Urban Area inDistrict 7 with about 20,000 permanent foreigners.

To promote foreigners’ trading of real estate products on the local market,Vietnam should increase the portion of property products available forforeigners in each project, experts said./.