Vietnam received foreign direct investment commitments worth US$1.68 billion in the real estate sector in the first four months of this year, a fourfold increase over that in the same period last year, proving that the Vietnamese housing market remains attractive to foreign investors, according to the General Statistics Office.

The figure was only $386 million in the same period last year.

In the year to April 20, the Southeast Asian country attracted close to $9.27 billion in foreign investment, edging up 4.5 percent year on year.

In particular, foreign investors registered to channel over $7.11 billion into 966 new projects, surging over 83 and nearly 29 percent, respectively. 

The processing and manufacturing sector took the lead in the proportion of the amount with nearly $5 billion, making up 70.2 percent.

The real estate sector came in second.

Investors from 48 countries and territories have injected some $66.4 billion into 1,100 property projects in Vietnam over the past 33 years, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Singapore emerged as the biggest investor in the sector in Vietnam, followed by South Korea, the Virgin Islands, and Japan.

In 2023 alone, real estate was also the second-largest recipient of foreign investment with nearly $4.67 billion, inching up 4.8 percent over the year-ago period.

Trang Bui, CEO of Cushman & Wakefield Vietnam, a commercial real estate service firm, said Vietnam has become a popular destination for many foreign investors amid the global economic volatility.

An enterprise specializing in M&A told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday that plenty of foreign investors have expressed their interest in legal real estate projects in Vietnam regardless of the local property sector’s difficulties and Vietnamese firms’ need for capital for survival.

Neil MacGregor, managing director of real estate service provider Savills Vietnam, said the firm had received many orders for M&A consultancy from Vietnamese enterprises.

Meanwhile, investors from Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan have sought to pour capital into the local property market.

FDI enterprises had funneled capital into industrial, tourism, and housing properties, said Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association.

KPMG’s statistics revealed that real estate ranked second in terms of M&A transaction value, accounting for 23 percent of the $4.4 billion transactions in the Vietnamese market as of the beginning of the last quarter of 2023.

Major investors involved in these transactions were from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea.

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