Laos’ capital of Vientiane has seen a building boom that is transforming its reputation as a quiet city dominated by low-rise buildings, the Nikkei Asian Review reported. At the moment several shopping malls and other developments are springing up across the city as the real estate market has started to show signs of life.
“So many shopping malls now — around 20 going up all around the city,” Pouthong Sengchanh, a property consultant with Vientiane New World, told the website. The Vientiane New World features a mix of shops, restaurants and offices newly stretching along the city’s Mekong riverfront and is one of many projects slated for construction in the city. It was noted by Vanthana Nolintha, a researcher at the government-linked National Economic Research Institute, that some of the new malls going up in Vientiane might not prove viable in the long run.
“Many new shopping malls have been opened, the majority of them do not offer high quality products, hence medium to high income locals still prefer to travel across the border for shopping. Therefore, the benefits of allowing many of these new malls are quite questionable,” Vanthana explained to the Nikkei Asian Review.
Property prices in the city can range from USD2,000 per sqm. in the city center to USD50 on the outskirts of town, William Hancock of Laos First & Associates, pointed out. Chinese and other foreign investors have been prominent players during Vientiane’s recent real estate expansion.
“Laos people are only about 40 percent of my clients,” Nakadej Invihan of Saiawardz Real Estate stated. “The rest are foreign, maybe 20 percent Chinese and 10 percent Korean, Vietnamese, Westerners. Land prices in Vientiane have gone up maybe 30-50 percent in the last two to three years, and I think it will continue like that.”
However, property prices outside Vientiane have remained cheap and property developers could soon look outside the capital for places to build. “Other cities and towns are a lot cheaper, and very interesting to invest in because prices are rising fast,” Hancock concluded.
Image: The Vientiane New World via facebook.com/VientianeNewWorld/
