Vietnam’s supply starved affordable housing market attracts Japanese investors

Japanese investors are looking to take advantage of growth opportunities in Vietnam’s affordable housing real estate segment, where demand significantly outstrips supply.

Early this month, Cosmos Initia, a subsidiary of Japan’s leading realty developer Daiwa House Group, joined hands with its compatriot firm Koterasu Group and Vietnam’s TT Capital to build the TT AVIO apartment project in Binh Duong province’s Di An town. The province, neighboring Ho Chi Minh City, is a southern industrial hub.

This 17,450 square meter affordable housing project includes nearly 2,000 apartments with an average area of less than 60 sqm each. Eighty percent of these units will be priced below VND2 billion (approximately $802,840).

Cosmos Initia and Koterasu Group also plan to invest $150 million in TT Capital over the next five years, aiming to supply 1,000 affordable housing units to the market annually.

Earlier in April, local developer Kim Oanh Group partnered with three Japanese companies to develop a $1 billion 50-hectare urban area project, also in Binh Duong.

The three Japanese companies – Sumitomo Forestry Group, Kumagai Gumi Group, and NTT Urban Development Company – will together hold a 49% stake in the joint venture with Kim Oanh Group holding the other 51%.

Several real estate collaborations between Vietnamese and Japanese firms were also seen last year.

One of these was a strategic pact between Kim Oanh Group and Sumitomo Forestry to develop real estate projects, particularly in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

Sumitomo Corporation also teamed up with Vietnamese real estate conglomerate BRG Group to jointly develop a smart city project in northern Hanoi, while Marubeni and Hung Thinh Group inked a co-investment agreement for projects in HCMC’s Thu Duc city.

Industry insiders and experts say that it is the long-term growth potential of the Vietnamese real estate market that makes it especially attractive to Japanese investors.

Supplementary factors to this include the expectation that new laws will improve market transparency and sustainability. Vietnam’s young population, rising incomes and growing housing demand are other factors that make the country’s realty market even more appealing, they add.

In the past, Japanese businesses primarily focused on purchasing and distributing real estate projects in Vietnam. However, they are now shifting their attention to directly engaging in construction, with particular emphasis on affordable housing.

Keisuke Muraoka, housing division director at Cosmos Initia, emphasized that in addition to legally cleared land, Japanese investors take account of the experience and operational and management capabilities of their partner companies, as also their achievements in the real estate market.