PetroVietnam Land (PVL) has announced that it is selling apartments at a loss in order to get money to pay due bank debts. Prior to that, a lot of other real estate firms also had to bargain away or offered surprisingly preferential conditions to buyers, just because of the difficulties in bank loan access.


The announcement that PVL accepts the loss of 70 billion dong when bargaining away 85 its apartments of PetroVietnam Landmark project has stirred up the public, though everyone knows the big difficulties of real estate developers when banks tighten credit.
The apartment price has been lowered to 15.5 million dong per square meter at minimum, which is thought to be low enough to make the apartments salable and help the investor take back money to pay bank debts.
Analysts say they can see clearly a new wave of bargaining away real estate projects due to the problems in capital arrangement.
On October 31, Saigon Mekong Company also surprised many people when confirming the price reductions for 500 apartments at An Tien project in Phuoc Kien commune of Nha Be district in HCM City. The initial sale price of 18 million dong has been reduced to 14.5 million dong.
Prior to that, in early October, the Dai Duong Group announced a promotion campaign which analysts believed a method of reducing prices. From October 5 to November 5, the buyers of high grade apartments at StarCity Le Van Luong, who accept to pay money sooner than the schedule, can enjoy the interest rate of 22 percent per annum for the sums of money paid in advance. The interest rate would be applied until the apartment delivery time, slated for September 2013.
Meanwhile, CEO Group has decided to give 10 Toyota Corolla Altis 1.8 MT valued at over 700 million dong to the first 10 clients, who sign contracts on buying the products of Sunny Garden City project in Quoc Oai district in Hanoi, from October 20 to November 30.
The big preferences offered by real estate firms have surprised a lot of people, who said that in the past, they never dreamed of having such favorable conditions.
The sell off of real estate projects is also occurring in HCM City. VnExpress has reported that an apartment in Thu Duc district could be sold at 17 million dong per square meter in 2010. Meanwhile, the same apartment still cannot find the buyers now even though it is offered to sell at 13-14 million dong per square meter only.
Not only big real estate developers, small investors have also been trying to bargain away their products to take back the investment capital.
Kim Phuong, an investor in Ha Dong district in Hanoi, said that she bought more than 100 square metre of land and two apartments in the west at several billions of dong. Now she decides to sell the land plot and the apartments, offering the discount rate of 6-10 percent, but she has not found buyers.
Director of a real estate trading floor on Le Van Luong Road in Hanoi said that in the last month, a lot of investors offered to sell land plots and apartments at low prices, but very few people have contacted to ask for information about the products.
Commenting about the impacts of the sale-off of PV Landmark’s apartments, Hoang Anh Saigon Real Estate Corporation Doan Chi Thanh said that this might be the first shock to the real estate market in the fourth quarter of the year.
The information will immediately affect the pricing of the projects in the district 2, and then the pricing of the projects in farer localities, including Thu Duc and district 9.
Nevertheless, the real estate developer said that the move by PV Land will not have much significance to those, who really have demand for accommodation.
“As far as I know, the price discounts will only be applied to wholesalers, who accept to pay 90-95 percent of the values of the contracts immediately, while not applied to individual clients. Therefore, those, who really have demand for accommodations, will still find it difficult to buy apartments,” he said.