Binh Duong real estate market stagnant                                  Poorly-planned projects have led to large housing inventory and a stagnant real estate market in Binh Duong Province. Binh Duong real estate market stagnant Tran Khanh Quang, director of Viet An Hoa Company, said there were no new projects in Binh Duong. The real estate market had grown recently but not as much as the markets in Long An and Dong Nai provinces. According to Quang, existing projects still have many empty apartments which was why investors were reluctant to start new projects. Moreover, because of excessive supply, prices won't increase. There are demands from Di An Commune and the areas near HCM City but the demand is small and most customers just want to buy plots of land. Quang said Binh Duong once had like thousands of real estate products and housing units at good prices five years ago and attracted a huge number of customers. But then those homes are sold and resold, investors can't find customers. A leader from the HCM City Real Estate Association said while the real estate market in Binh Duong had slowed because of excessive supply, Dong Nai was having a huge boost from planned Long Thanh Airport and highways. Long An Province was neglected before so it is attractive to investors now. Nguyen Van Duc, deputy director of Dat Lanh Company said the authorities in Binh Duong was too ambitious and had miscalculated. "They relocated their administrative centre to the new urban area, hoping that their officials would also move there but they were wrong. It's not easy to motivate people to relocate, they need long-term policies," he said. Binh Duong authorities want to establish a similar urban area like Phu My Hung in southern HCM City. However, they set the prices too high, offering people to make an instalment payment in 20 years and no one wanted to move in. Now the area looks deserted. A square metre of land in the urban area cost VND30m (USD1,300) while the land 100 metres away costs just VND3m per square metre. Tran Khanh Quang, director of Viet An Hoa Company suggested lowering the prices. The province has a population of over one million, with a few hundreds of thousands of migrants from other provinces, and many of them are poor workers. Duc also agreed that lowering prices was necessary as they need a breakthrough to deal with the high inventory. Meanwhile, Nguyen Vu Huy, director of Ban Viet Company said Binh Duong authorities should invest in small urban areas with affordable land lots before investing in luxury projects. Le Hoang Chau, chairman of HCM City Real Estate Association, said customers were reluctant to move to new urban areas as Binh Duong Province's infrastructure was still weak. Vietnamnet