Real estate industry has hard time getting back on its feet post-pandemic
Real estate businesses in Ho Chi Minh City are gingerly reopening, mostly consulting and carrying out transactions online due to the COVID-19 prevention and control regulations still in force.
Real estate businesses hope that the COVID-19 prevention and control regulations will be further relaxed to recover post-pandemic. (Photo: nld.com.vn)
HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Real estate businesses in Ho Chi Minh City aregingerly reopening, mostly consulting and carrying out transactions online dueto the COVID-19 prevention and control regulations still in force.
Tran Trong Tien,general director of a real estate brokerage in Binh Thanh district, said hiscompany resumed operations at the beginning of October but is only allowed tohave 30 percent of employees in office.
"Our mainprojects are in Phu Quoc Island and some other localities, but … we cannot takevisitors to show them the projects, and most consultations are online."
Pham Lam,chairman of real estate services firm DKRA Vietnam, said most businesses in theindustry had resumed operations, but were effecting few transactions sincecustomers were hesitant to buy when they could not personally see the products.Most were opting to wait until they see them.
Nguyen Huong, GeneralDirector of Dai Phuc Land Real Estate Joint Stock Company, said the COVID-19pandemic caused great difficulties for real estate businesses: all their previousplans had been binned and most faced cash flow pressures.
Banks cutlending to real estate business in the first half of this year, and this islikely to continue.
LienVietPostBank'sfinancial statements show that loans outstanding to the real estate sector fellin the first 6 months of this year by 52 percent to 1.67 trillion VND (72.6million USD), or only 0.87 percent of total loans.
At VPBank, thefigure fell by 12 percent to 32.4 trillion VND.
Chairman ofthe HCM City Real Estate Association Le Hoang Chau wants the central bank toinstruct lenders to reduce loan interest rates by 2 percentage points, extendpayment terms and roll over loans and not turn them into bad debts to enablethe industry to recover./.
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Real estate businesses hope that the COVID-19 prevention and control regulations will be further relaxed to recover post-pandemic. (Photo: nld.com.vn) 
