Property experts worry that without standards, housing developers will advertise their projects as ‘smart’ to attract buyers and raise asking prices.
Housing developers are applying technologies in building management like magnetic cards for elevator control, door and air-conditioning control via smartphones, says Nguyen Van Hau, Director of Asian Holding Real Estate Company.
He points out most of the popular “smart home” technologies in Vietnam are simple, while real smart homes should be more than that.
Hau adds advertising housing projects as smart could be a way for developers to push prices up, while there was still no agency or organization in charge of evaluating the efficiency of such “smart” technologies.
Sharing the same view point, Vo Huynh Tuan Kiet from CBRE Vietnam says the “smart” feature in the local housing market is still simple, adding that smart homes would need integrated solutions to optimize usage such as promoting energy saving and recycling waste. In addition, smart projects also need smart transport connectivity, while these mechanisms are still rare in the country.
Due to the lack of standards for smart homes, lots of buyers were disappointed about their new homes when the quality and convenience were not as advertised, says Pham Lam, General Director of DKRA Vietnam.
He adds standards for smart homes should also include connectivity, energy management systems, security systems, information security, and smart operation systems.
Chairman of HCM City Real Estate Association (HoREA) Le Hoang Chau says many housing developers were advertising their projects as high-end or luxury, but their quality was not up to scratch.
In November 2018, HoREA proposed to the management agencies to tighten quality control on housing projects to prevent developers from exaggerating features of their projects to raise prices.
Statistics portal Statista shows revenue in Vietnam’s smart home market was anticipated to amount to $83 million in 2019, with an annual growth rate expected at 51.7 percent in 2019-2023 period.
