Singaporeans look to invest in ‘Vietnamese Sentosa’
SINGAPOREAN investors and real-estate professionals attended an event held recently by Sun Group, a Vietnamese property firm, held recently in Singapore introducing its projects on the Vietna-mese island of Phu Quoc in the Gulf of Thailand.
Sam Ong, director of Savills Singapore, compared Phu Quoc to Sentosa, a popular island resort in Singapore, saying there were similarities in geography, natural beauty and tourism potential.
He said Phu Quoc was on the way to becoming Vietnam’s Sentosa in the near future.
Ong said Sentosa used to be a small fishing village, but 20 years later, it was now a small tourist paradise. He suggested that Phu Quoc would enjoy similar success, with investors changing the island immensely in the future.
Thus, with Singaporean real-estate investors tending to expand their investment portfolios outside the traditional markets of Thailand and Bali, Phu Quoc is set to be the new destination, he said.
Further, under the Monetary Administration of Singapore, investors have to pay another 7-per-cent tax on the value of their second real-estate investment and another 10 per cent on the value of the third one. To avoid such high taxes, a lot of Singaporeans have chosen to invest outside their own country.
Savills Singapore said investors in the city-state were “very fastidious”, adding that they only eyed high-end projects with good profitability and prestigious investors.
Victor Hong, an investor with experience in the international real-estate market, said he was attracted to Sun Group projects as he had stayed at the InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort and was subsequently convinced about the potential.
At Sentosa, most of the two-bedroom beachfront apartments with an area of some 110 square metres cost US$3 million (Bt105 million), or about $27,000 per square metre, while a very high-value apartment close to the sandy beaches can cost nearly $7 million. The price of each villa at Sentosa is over $11 million.
Meanwhile, a villa in Sun Group’s Phu Quoc Resort costs between $1 million and $2 million, while an apartment costs $150,000 to $1 million.
According to a Sun Group representative, along with the prestige, popularity and quality of its resorts in the international market, the competitive prices, especially the commitment of a minimum 9-per-cent profit within 10 years, were attractions for real-estate products on Phu Quoc Island.
This month, Sun Group is offering buyers of Premier Village Phu Quoc Resort and Condotel Premier Residences Phu Quoc Emerald Bay a two-night stay at the six-star JW Marriott Phu Quoc Resort & Spa Emerald Bay and other attractive deals.