Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

This paper examines the ethical dimensions of circulating real-estate investments in Vietnam’s urban centers, asking how this widespread form of short-term speculative investment contributes to inflated property price and, ultimately, to the country’s ongoing housing crisis.

Paper long abstract

Housing affordability in Vietnam has become a critical issue, as real-estate prices far exceed the average income of most Vietnamese. This paradox emerges alongside the rapid expansion of housing development plans across urban centers. A large proportion of buyers are not purchasing homes to live in them, but rather as assets to flip for profit. More than 75 percent of homebuyers are acquiring their second property or more, treating real estate as an investment. Buying-off-the-plan is common. Buyers purchase units while they are still under construction and resell the purchase contracts at a profit. By the time the construction is completed, these properties have been traded multiple times as forms of “promised materiality” circulating through payment process. Every transfer raises the price, contributing to inflation in housing costs – a practice widely known in Vietnam as real estate “surfing”.

Vietnam’s new urban developmental plans thus become gold mines for short-term speculative investors who increase their capital through property transactions. Meanwhile, the resulting price inflation renders housing increasingly unaffordable for those seeking homes to live in, making Vietnam one of the least affordable real-estate markets in the world, marked by stark inequalities in access to housing.

This paper explains how wealth circulates and becomes inflated within housing development plans. Drawing on ethnographic research, it brings together the perspectives of real-estate developers, agents and brokers, homebuyers, speculative investors, and people struggling to buy a home. The paper examines the ethical implications of this phenomenon, and sheds light on Vietnam’s housing crisis.