Many local residents were shocked to hear that a number of apartments in HCM City worth US$1 to $5 million each have been bought by Vietnamese customers recently.

Novaland, developer of the Sunrise City, has reportedly offered several apartments worth between $1 and $5 million each. The five-bedroom penthouse apartments on the 35th floor of the Sunrise City building are considered sky-high villas.

Prime location and luxury furnishings were the major reasons that help the developer ask for such high prices, said a Novaland salesman.

A manager at Novaland said singer Cam Ly had purchased a 400sq.m apartment priced at over $1 million while singer Dam Vinh Hung had registered to purchase a 700sq.m penhouse apartment worth $5 million at Sunrise City.

Nguyen Kim Son, director for Development and Business at BTA Investment Management Viet Nam Co developer of the Diamond Island project in HCM City’s District 2, said the project’s Bloc B, which is now under construction, would provide 300 apartments, including 10 worth between US$2 and $3 million each. Apartments worth over $1 million would account for 25 per cent of the project, he said.

The Diamond Island Project is a complex of residential and hotel buildings covering nearly 8ha area near the Sai Gon River and the Giong Ong To Canal in District 2’s Binh Trung Dong Ward. The project includes 1,100 apartments ranging from 86sq.m to 615sq.m in space, with one to four bedrooms each.

BTA said all its $3 million apartments and 40 per cent of those that cost between $1 million to $2 million each had been pruchased. Seventy per cent of the buyers of these luxury apartments were locals or overseas Vietnamese and the remaining 30 per cent were foreigners, the company said.

"The country now has many nouveau-riche people who are looking for multi-million dollar apartments," Son was quoted by the Sai Gon Marketing newspaper as saying. He added most local buyers were well-known personalities.

Son said the standard multi-million dollar apartment would have high-end equipment and luxurious inner decorations, private swimming pools and memberships in yacht clubs.

Meanwhile, a sales agent at a property company who declined to be named said all the above statements were just advertising gimmicks.

He said the developers of serviced apartment projects in HCM City such as Blooming Park, the Vista, Sai Gon Pearl and Estella, had found it difficult to sell penthouse apartments at these buildings which are priced at over VND10 billion ($540,000) each. Tighter control over bank loans aimed at discouraging real estate speculation is one of the reasons that make customers reluctant to buy such luxury apartments, he added.

Truong Quoc Hung, head of the marketing group No. 2 at Phu My Hung Co said the company’s Riverside Residence project includes a number of apartments with a housing space of 554sq.m that are priced up to $1.23 million each. He said it was difficult to seek buyers for these luxury apartments and the company was yet to sell even one of them.

Colleges demand fees in dollars

Many students at local universities in the country are complaining that they are being asked to pay tuition fees in the US dollar or in dong at the black market exchange rate. In a letter sent to online newspaper VietnamNet last month, a student at the Ha Noi University of Industry’s International Cooperation Faculty said their tuition fees had been raised from US$470 for a training course in the beginning of the school year to $520 in early December.

The letter said in the previous year, when the exchange rate stood at VND18,400 a US dollar in the market, students paid VND17,500 for a US dollar as announced by the State Bank of Viet Nam. But now they were being asked to pay fees at VND19,500 per dollar, the current black market rate.

The students’ families had to "move heaven and earth" to cough up the VND11 million ($540) because the school asked them to pay it in just 20 days from the beginning of the course, the letter said.

Tran Van Thanh, deputy chief of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Personnel Department, said no regulations had been issued about collecting tuition fees in US dollars.

Nguyen Van Ngu, head of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Planning and Finance Department, agreed with Thanh, but added some schools could collect tuition fees for the programmes jointly carried out with foreign partners.

However, he also said that if fees are collected in US dollar, they must be calculated at the prevailing official rate.

In addition to the Ha Noi University of Industry, many private universities and foreign language training centres are also collecting fees denominated in US dollars.

For instance, a student at the Friendship University of Technology and Management has to pay tuition fees of nearly VND9 million per month. To attain a degree at the FPT University’s IT Department, a student has to pay $8,800 for the 4-year course.

The situation may change next school year (2010-11) with the Ministry of Education and Training announcing last Saturday that universities and colleges must publicise monthly or annual tuition fees and all these must be mentioned in Vietnamese dong.

Lam Dong curtails golf course

Residents’ complaints and Governmental pressure have prompted the People’s Committee of cental Highland Lam Dong Province to cancel four of 10 golf course projects that it had licensed previously.

In a document issued last week, the provincial administration asked district authorities and relevant agencies to conduct an overall review of golf course projects in the province.

It also asked the provincial departments of Planning and Investment, Natural Resources and Environment, Agriculture and Rural Development and Culture, Sports and Tourism to oversee the implementation and progress of the projects after licensing.

Golf course projects which do not begin implementation 12 months after licensing as well as those do not become operational 48 months after that will have their licenses revoked.

District authorities and agencies have also been asked to monitor construction work on licensed golf course projects to ensure that the area is used for projects to support the golf courses’ operations. Construction of housing and other properties for sale has been banned in the areas granted for golf course projects.

According to figures from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, as of July 2009, the provincial authorities had licensed up to 10 golf course projects which took up 6,551 ha. Local investors are behind six of these projects that have a total registered capital of US$770 million.

But out of these 10, only one, in Da Lat, is up and running. The other nine projects in Bao Lam, Don Duong and Duc Trong Districts have only broken ground so far.

Although golf courses take up huge amounts of land and capital, local governments and residents stand to gain little from them.

Under a Government decision issued in November 2009, the country had 89 golf courses with each 18-hole course taking up less than 100 ha by 2020 a reduction from 144 projects totally covering 49,000 ha licenced by the end of June 2009. — VNS

Source: Viet Nam News