[SEAJ]

Originally Posted by mutantchicken

this comment just smacks of something wrong...you ask what to look for, the fact you ask that means u know very little about housing market, ie cost , legalities, maintenance costs, eg my auntie bought a house on THD cost 17 bill, ie roughly 850k usd, now your disposable income can buy that in cash because unlikely u can get a mortgage, and your disposable income can take such a loss, from your posts arent you currently or previously a taxi driver, and sure if you are a multibillionaire, then im sure there better financial ways to invest your money and secure a vb.

From research I did a few years ago, Vietnamese property by foreigners are so restrictive, the layers of bureaucracy and requirements so onerous, that it makes very little sense for foreigners to want to own – or rather leasehold – property there. It ranges from the quirky (real estate transactions based on the price of gold? What?) to the expensive (comparatively high taxes and high inflation rate that is not reflected in real estate price trends) to being very restrictive (I read somewhere that up to last year, there were actually only 126 or so Foreign leaseholders in Vietnam)

I know that last year, there were proposals to further liberalize the laws to favor foreigners participating but it seems that such moves are, as is probably usual for Vietnam, moving at glacial speed and meanwhile, property prices has not really reversed from its +- 4 years slide. And whilst I am definitely NOT up-to-date on the Vietnamese property market (lost most interest in it when I did my original research), I believe that the apparent reluctance of the Vietnamese people/ government to allow even any semblance of foreign ownership or even control of any real estate in their country, will make investments there very hard to justify in the near or middle term.

Apologize if I’m not factual or up-to-date on the real situation in Vietnam now, but I hope to at least urge anybody who is contemplating “owning” property there to really do their research before committing. IMHO, anecdotal and historical trends are just too stacked up against it to make it a judicious decision.

Just a suggestion....with my apologies as it's based on the little that I know about Vietnam.

SEAJ