Hanoi (VNA) – Merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in Vietnam’s realestate sector are forecast to increase in 2018, driven by the market’ssignificant potential, experts said.

Dang Xuan Minh, general director of AVM Vietnam & Vietnam M&A Forum,said the domestic property market was embarking on a second wave of M&A,after 2015, which would be fuelled by the hastened privatisation of State-ownedenterprises and the increasing interests of foreign investors.

The M&A market was expected to touch 8 billion USD this year, of which thevalue of property deals accounted for the largest part, Minh said, addingaverage value was some 50-60 million USD per deal.

M&A deals in the real estate sector were estimated at some 2 billion USDthis year.

According to Phan Xuan Can, chairman of property consultancy firm Sohovietnam,the announced M&A deals in the real estate sector were just the tip of theiceberg, and many deals were not disclosed.

Can estimated that the value of M&A deals in the real estate sector accountedfor just 20-30 percent of the real value.

In 2018, many mega deals were expected to take place, mainly in the segments ofapartment, office, tourism property and urban land, Can said.

According to Pham Thanh Hung, the rapid international integration of Vietnamwill have significant impact on the real estate market.

Hung said the property market is attracting foreign investors, adding thatthere was an increasing wave of investment in Vietnam’s property market fromJapan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and China, as well as Germany and theUnited Kingdom, especially in the high-end segments.

Duong Thuy Dung, director of Research and Consulting, CBRE Vietnam, said M&Ain the real estate market was also fuelled by the improvement in markettransparency and simplification of procedures. The M&A trend would continuein the future and this would infuse fresh capital into the market, Dung said.

Statistics of batdongsan.com.vn which had an average 50 million pageviews per month, showed there were a large number of online searches related toVietnam’s property market in the apartment and villa segments in Hanoi and HCMCity from Singapore, the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea andAustralia.-VNA