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Low-cost houses must not mean low quality
The fact that construction firms promise to lower the sale prices of apartments to the lowest possible levels has raised the worries that low cost houses will be low quality products.
Low-cost does not mean low quality
Nguyen Van Tuan, Chairman of the Vietnam Import-Export and Construction Corporation (Vinaconex), affirmed that low-cost apartments do not mean low-quality products.
The houses for low income earners are expected to have the sale prices at between VND 5-7 million per square metre, which means that each apartment is priced between VND 200-400 million. Tuan affirmed that the products still have to meet the requirements on quality, technique and fine arts.
“People always have doubts about the quality of low cost apartments,” said Dang Hoang Huy, Director of Vinaconex Xuan Mai Concrete and Construction.
Huy said that he once worried when only several families moved to live in the two five-storey buildings of the Xuan Mai project. However, just several days later, the apartments, priced at VND 170 million each, were sold out after people found the quality of the apartments ‘acceptable.’
Besides the said two five-storey buildings, the Xuan Mai project also has three seven-storey buildings, one nine-storey building and two eleven-storey buildings. With the exception the VIP apartment at the eleven-storey building, the remaining apartments are between 60-70 sq m large on average, with 2-3 bedrooms, and have the sale prices between VND 5-7 million/sq m, including tax.
Nguyen Van Manh and his wife, both who are working, are the owners of the 54 sq m on the third floor of CT1 bloc of Xuan Mai new urban area in Thuy Xuan Tien commune in Chuong My district, Hanoi. They related that they bought the apartment in June 2008 at VND 190 million. Manh said that 54 sq m is enough for his small family. He believes that the apartment proves to best fit the couples which have the monthly income of VND 5 million like their own.
Nguyen Van Duc, Deputy Director of Dat Lanh Company Ltd. in HCM City, said that in order to develop low cost apartments in a sustainable way, construction companies need to count on all the construction costs, and they should not dump in the market to ‘polish’ their images.
Duc said that the sale prices of apartments depend not only on the land price, but also the infrastructure, contractors’ capability and technology application.
“If enterprises race against each other to cut down construction costs, I’m afraid that the construction works’ quality will not be high enough.”
It’s not difficult to control low cost apartments’ quality
Former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Dang Hung Vo said that the quality of construction works is really a problem if considering that contractors may collude with each other and act not on the interests of consumers, but on their benefit.
However, Vo said that it is not really a big problem in terms of technology, as he believes that solutions can be found for the problem.
“The modern technologies allow us to check the quality of construction works at high reliability,” he said.
Vo shares the same view with other experts and enterprises that developing low cost houses plays a very important socio-economic role. The biggest problem is not the uncontrollable quality of low cost houses, but whether the houses can go to those who really have the demand for accommodations.
Nguyen Nga
vietnamnet
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