Online real estate databases are booming in Vietnam thanks to growing residential demand.

During this year’s first half, the Vietnamese real estate market saw the appearance of Nha Home Vietnam, a the newly-established online real estate database. In contrast with other sites, Nha Home Vietnam focuses on offering property data at a low cost.

“For each project, we have a couple of graphics showcasing the correlation between the premises and the prices but also distribution of buildings’ apartment and distribution of apartments’ types,” Julien Godard, CEO and founder of Nha Home Vietnam explained. “As soon as we collect enough data, we will compare projects within a district, a city, and even projects located in different cities.”

To date, the startup has collected data on 1,439 real estate projects with more than 350,000 apartment units across 50 districts and 33 cities.

In addition to Nha Home Vietnam, the local property market has seen many similar platforms appear in recent years, according to the Vietnam Association of Realtors (VAR). The association added that there are more than 200 active real estate databases in the country at the moment.

According to the Ministry of Construction, local residential demand has been consistently high and will continue growing in the next 10 years.

According to data published by India-based Mordor Intelligence, Vietnam has high absorption rate of 70-80 per cent of new supply and surging demand for residential real estate. There are 30,000-40,000 new apartment units available each year. Bigger cities and coastal cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, and the capital Hanoi have seen the fastest development which is expected to continue for years to come.

The Philippines-based Global Property Guide also pointed out that in Southeast Asia, Vietnam ranks fifth in gross rental yield at 4.3 per cent, higher than Malaysia (3.72 per cent) and Singapore (2.32 per cent).

The growing potential of the business models has also attracted investors. For example, Cho Tot last year successfully mobilised $80 million investment from South Korea-based Naver Group. Malaysia-based PropertyGuru that operates batdongsan.com.vn in 2020 got $220 million capital from the two global leading investment funds TPG and KKR.

According to the Vietnam National Real Estate Association, local online real estate databases and trading platforms are valued at $21 billion and will continue growing.

By Van Anh