Singapore realty developers show divergence in Vietnam

Major Singaporean real estate developers operating in Vietnam have painted an investment picture with contrasting colors this year as the fast-developing economy of almost 100 million people recovers from the pandemic.

CapitaLand and Keppel Land are typical examples, with the former being much busier while the latter continues to suffer delays in the construction progress of a $500 million integrated township project in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest economic hub.

Merger and acquisition

In the first month of 2022, CapitaLand Development (CLD) of CapitaLand Group, transferred the Grade-A office building Capital Place in the center of Hanoi for $550 million to Singapore-based Viva Land, setting a new record in transaction value of office buildings in the city's market.

Opened in 2020, Capital Place is strategically located in the heart of Ba Dinh district. The building has 100,000 square meters of net lettable area across two 37-story office towers. Capital Place is home to multinational tenants like HSBC, Porsche, Standard Chartered Bank, Toto Vietnam, and more. It is the first office development in Hanoi to obtain a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, an international standard for green architecture.

CLD announced this July it was acquiring a prime mixed-use site in Thu Duc city on the outskirts of HCMC, with an estimated total gross development value of $720 million. Thu Duc has been earmarked to become an economic and technology hub. The mixed-use project with an area of about eight hectares will comprise over 1,100 high-end residential units and shophouses.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2023, CLD said. Work on the project is expected to start in 2024 and scheduled for completion by 2027.

“We continue to expand in our core market Vietnam by securing another highly coveted site in Thu Duc city, after our recent investment in Binh Duong and memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government to invest in the up-and-coming Bac Giang province,” said CLD Vietnam CEO Ronald Tay.

“We will continue to seek more investment opportunities across various asset classes to strengthen CLD’s position as a leading developer in Vietnam,” he added.

In February 2022, CLD signed an MoU with the People’s Committee of Bac Giang province in the north to explore the development of CLD’s first industrial park, logistics park and township development in Vietnam with a total projected investment of $1 billion.

Not long before that, CLD announced in December 2021 its acquisition of a site in Binh Duong New City in Binh Duong province next to HCMC from Vietnamese developer Becamex for a first large-scale residential development in Vietnam. With a projected total gross development value of $800 million, it will add around 3,700 homes for about 12,000 residents in Binh Duong.

This May, CLD unveiled its luxury residence Zenity in HCMC. The 198-unit project offers a wide selection of fully-furnished units, from two- to three-bedroom apartments, as well as premium duplexes and penthouses.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) is also a tool for Keppel Land. In January, it signed an agreement to buy a 49% stake in three residential land plots totaling 14.2 hectares in the Mailand Hanoi City project in Hanoi’s Hoai Duc district for a total of $119 million. The seller was Vietnamese developer Phu Long Real Estate JSC.

Keppel Land said upon completion of the transaction, the two sides planned to jointly develop a total of about 1,260 homes (1,020 condominium apartments and 240 landed homes).

Keppel Land’s long-delayed Saigon Sports City

The $500 million Saigon Sports City project, developed by Singapore’s Keppel Land on the outskirts of HCMC, has seen little construction progress three years after groundbreaking.

Keppel Land, in partnership with Keppel Urban Solutions, broke ground for the project in November 2019 with plans to develop a 64-hectare site into a smart, integrated township in District 2, now part of Thu Duc city. The developer planned to complete the project in 2027.

It was expected to provide 4,300 premium homes, and such features as a waterfront boulevard, an open public plaza, and a one-stop lifestyle hub with comprehensive facilities for sports, entertainment, shopping, and dining. The first phase of the project was planned to comprise residential and commercial spaces and sports facilities.

However, Keppel Land has completed only the home samples and bridge connecting the north with the southern part of the site, with no signs of further construction. It has not made public the timeline for key components like the sports facilities and residential area.

Industrial real estate

Singaporean investors have held an optimistic view of the Vietnamese logistics real estate market as the logistics sector is booming as a result of the country’s rising status as a manufacturing hub.

Singaporean heavyweight Sembcorp Industries on December 2 broke ground for its latest logistics property in the country, Sembcorp Logistics Park Quang Ngai, the first modern ready-built warehouse in central Vietnam to date. The facility will offer single-story warehouses with a total land area of six hectares and a gross floor area of 35,500 square meters. Construction is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2023.

Partnering with Sembcorp in the project are Hankyu Hanshin Properties, a developer of commercial facilities and residential properties with assets mainly located along railway lines in the western side of Japan, and CRE Asia, one of Japan’s largest management companies specializing in real estate properties for logistics operations.

“Sembcorp strives to expand its industrial portfolio across Vietnam with a vision to provide manufacturers with quality logistics properties in strategic locations,” said Charles Chong, country manager in Vietnam of Sembcorp Development, a Sembcorp Industries subsidiary.

“Vietnam has grown exponentially through the years and will continue to be an important manufacturing base in Asia,” he stressed.

“We mark our latest milestone in warehouse development with these new modern ready-built warehouses in Quang Ngai, which is our third in the country and first in the central region.”

In early 2022, GLP, a global real estate logistics provider and investment manager based in Singapore, announced the establishment of GLP Vietnam Development Partners I Fund with a total investment value of $1.1 billion into six logistics center projects with a total area of up to 900,000 square meters.

The new platform is one of Southeast Asia’s largest logistics development funds. SLP, the Vietnam asset management unit of GLP, is carrying out GLP’s logistics expansions in the country. Last week, SLP delivered around 20,000 square meters of warehousing in SLP Park Xuyen A in Long An province next to HCMC to Vietnamese delivery company Giao Hang Nhanh.

This marked the first warehouse unit handed over to a customer as part of phase one of the SLP Park Xuyen A project.

Boustead Projects Limited, listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) as AVM, announced in May it entered a strategic partnership with Vietnamese firm Khai Toan JSC to develop a portfolio of logistics and industrial properties in Vietnam.

Boustead said it had acquired six logistics projects in industrial parks in Dong Nai next to HCMC and Bac Ninh province in the north from Khai Toan for $84.2 million altogether. Three are in Dong Nai and three in Bac Ninh, and Boustead’s representative in the Vietnam partnership is its wholly-owned subsidiary BP Vietnam Development Pte. Ltd., known as BP-VD.