HCM City (VNA)ꦏ - Around 1,000 foreigners have registered to buy homes in HCM City, especially luxury ones, six months after the 2014 Housing Law went into force, according to the HCM City Real Estate Association (HoREA).

The figure is well above 250 house transactions with foreign involvement in the country from 2008 to July 2015 when Vietnam adopted a pilot plan to sell houses to certain groups of foreigners and overseas Vietnamese, the Saigon Times cited the sources as saying. HoREA said the number of overseas Vietnamese owning homes in the country has also edged up thanks to the revised housing law, which makes it easier for overseas Vietnamese to own homes and obtain land-use right certificates. In addition to more money from foreign homebuyers, the property market has lured more bank loans, foreign direct investment (FDI) capital and incoming remittances. A recent report of HoREA on the property market showed bank loans for the market alone grew some 18 percent last year, well above 15 percent in 2014. HCM City, the biggest real estate market in Vietnam, saw credit for real estate projects amounting to 140 trillion VND (6.2 billion USD) in 2015, accounting for 12.3 percent of total outstanding loans. According to statistics of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and the Ministry of Construction, credit for the property market made up 23.5 percent of total outstanding loans in 2010, 11 percent in 2011, 14 percent in 2012 and 14.7 percent in 2013 and 15.2 percent in 2014. Average credit growth in the real estate market stood at 14-15 percent per annum in the 2012-2014 period, and the percentage last year was the highest in five years. New policies of the Government and the SBV supported the recovery of the real estate sector. Many banks joined hands with realty developers to fund their projects and support homebuyers, HoREA said in its report. Incoming remittances in HCM City totaled 5.5 billion USD last year, equivalent to 38.69 percent of Vietnam’s total. Of the amount, around 21.6 percent went to the property market. Of 22.76-billion USD FDI approvals in Vietnam in 2015, some 2.32 billion USD flowed into projects in the real estate sector, which was ranked third in terms of attractiveness for foreign investors. HCM City’s property market alone lured some 1.3 billion USD in FDI in the same year. A number of foreign firms have invested in property projects in Vietnam by acquiring shares of developers, contributing capital and lending.-VNA