Apartment living part of the furniture in nation’s southern hub

The first apartment building in Ho Chi Minh City opened in 1995

They are fully serviced providing daily cleaning, linen changes, 24-hour security, satellite television and all rents that include electricity and water charges. Additional facilities such as swimming pool and gym are also provided.
Since 1995, many other serviced apartment buildings have been completed providing similar high standards of accommodation and services and charging relatively high rents. Apartment blocks have between 45 and 183 apartment per building.
These apartment buildings have been developed by foreign developers in joint-venture partnership with local land owners and are aimed entirely at the expatriate employees of government consulates or high ranking staff of foreign companies in Ho Chi Minh City.
Along with these major buildings over the last five years a small number of locally developed apartment buildings have been completed. These buildings lack a number of facilities such as swimming pool and gym and are of a lower standard in terms of services provided for example frequency of cleaning services and quality of fixtures and fittings.
Apartments of this type are aimed at those middle to lower expatriate employees who do not wish to live in Vietnamese style rented houses but cannot afford the high rentals payable at the other serviced apartment buildings.
With respect to the high-end apartment blocks, there are 17 buildings providing 1,589 apartments of one, two, three and four bedroom units. The latest buildings to be completed are Saigon Domaine for which Dinning & Associates are the marketing agents.
Saigon Domaine provides 45 units approximately 20 minutes drive from the centre of District 1 on the banks of the Saigon River. Another building is the Ocean Place located in the heart of the city centre providing 96 units. Ocean Place is also part of the Sheraton Hotel.
With respect to the lower-end apartment buildings, very few have been completed in the city centre. These buildings are located on the outskirts of District 1 in District 3 or in Phu Nhuan District.
We are aware of only four buildings which would fit this category providing 60 units of mostly one and two bedrooms. The sizes of the one bedrooms range from 54- 70 square metres and for two bedrooms 60 -112 sqm.
Other cheaper apartments can be found although these are simply Vietnamese shop houses converted into one or two apartments on each floor. This further category provides accommodation for those expatriates who have a monthly rental budget in the region of $500 such as English teachers.
As the sizes of apartments change substantially between developments detailed above, we have provided the general range (exceptions can be found for very large apartments within each category) of monthly rentals achieved for the apartments based upon the number of bedrooms in the table to the left.