Cool real estate market replaces foreign distributors with local ones

But those days are gone.

With the market cooling off and investors turning their back to high-end properties, foreign real estate firms over the past year no longer had a good time.

Savills, Knight Frank and CBRE for the past year had to give the chance to distribute the Indochina Plaza Hanoi project to Hanoi-based DTJ Group.

The priority to distribute the project was once associated with Savills Vietnam. Then its competitors such as Knight Frank and CBRE, the famous real estate service provider stepped in. But all have been replaced by DTJ.

Other big projects in Hanoi such as Mulberry Lane or Cana Park have also replaced foreign distributors with local ones.

Vincom Group has also broken up with its long-year foreign partners. The corporation is selling its projects itself, such as it did with the Royal City project recently.

Several developers of high-end real estate projects in Hanoi said they are willing to invite local distributors instead of foreign-labeled ones.

For a long time, hiring a foreign distributor was the optimum choice as the foreign firms made good business and they gave the project a better name.

But according to experts in the field, difficulties of the market have made the matter of fame no longer important.

Meanwhile, foreign distributors asked for higher payment and have failed to renew their sales and marketing measures to fit in the cooling market. They have failed to sell the project on time or make the profit promised to the developers.

These foreign firms have lost a lot of spotlight. Their reports have been more biased and less accurate. Some were even contradictory to each other.

So they were replaced or supplemented with local firms, which have made big improvements over the past time with proven successes in sales, management and marketing.

It showed good signs for Vietnam’s real estate market, insiders said.