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Thu Huong Le · · 9 min readWhy property tech is Vietnam’s next must-watch sector
Lately, Vietnamese proptech startups have been getting more love from investors.
In the three years since PropertyGuru had acquired Vietnam’s real estate listing portal Batdongsan.com.vn, tech startups in the country have been popping up to disrupt an opaque sector that is often associated with scams and fake listings.
An apartment complex in Ho Chi Minh City / Photo credit: 123rf
Last year, full-stack real estate platform Propzy bagged US$25m in series A funding led by SoftBank Ventures Asia and Gaw Capital. Rever, another tech-enabled brokerage, has raised a total of US$6.3 million from both domestic and foreign VC firms. Homebase, a rent-to-own startup based in Ho Chi Minh City, is backed by several notable investors that include Y Combinator, 1982 Ventures, and 99.co founder Darius Cheung.
The country’s new generation of proptech startups want to tackle the low level of trust in real estate transactions while capitalizing on a boom in demand in residential housing.
“In Vietnam, I believe we have just finished the phase of proptech 1.0, which is mainly about online classified sites,” Duc Ngoc Luu, a proptech expert in Vietnam, tells Tech in Asia. “The question you have to ask now is: What do consumers in the country need aside from classified sites?”
Moving beyond listings
Batdongsan.com.vn and Muabannhadat.vn were once the country’s two giants in real estate listing services.
See also: PropertyGuru’s revenue and valuation fall for the first time in years
During its peak, Muabannhatdat.vn reportedly carried 85% of real estate listings in Vietnam. However, it was shut down at the end of 2020 by its Switzerland-based parent company Ringer AG, which cited that the Covid-19 pandemic had made it “impossible to find a viable solution to continue the platform with economic success in the future.”
Unlike in the US, the Vietnamese market does not have a multiple listing system, which is a centralized database of properties for sale established by both listing and selling brokers.
“One of the biggest pain points of the Vietnamese real estate market is the lack of transparency,” says Vy Le, general partner of Do Ventures. “Buyers are confused by fake listings commonly found on hundreds of websites that provide real estate brokerage services.”
That’s what tech-enabled brokerage startup Rever aims to address.
Not an easy feat
The proptech party is getting crowded
The next Beike for Vietnam?
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Though just starting to take off, the proptech party in Vietnam is already getting crowded. What can startups in the country do to disrupt an opaque sector?
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