Bim Group, Tan Hoang Minh, Sunshine Group and Thanh Yen Group are considered the pioneers in the field. Their projects are mostly located in localities with developed tourism and a high number of expats such as Quang Ninh, Hanoi, HCMC and Nha Trang.
As a hybrid product between ‘home’ and ‘hotel’, hometel can be used as both residence and hotel for rent, and it has all the amenities and services of a resort.
The biggest difference between hometel and condotel that real estate developers emphasize is that hometel owners can own it forever, while condotel owners' term is 50-70 years at maximum.
Hometel is an improved version of condotel. This is the product real estate developers offer to satisfy customers’ increasingly choosy demand. High-income customers are not only interested in apartments, but also in associated services.
Analysts said that hometels are attractive to investors, firstly because of its reasonable price, around VND1 billion. Higher-end products can be priced at up to VND3 billion. Meanwhile, the value of homtels may increase.
Maxshare, the distributor of Hometel Green Bay Premium, had advertised that it is easy to lease 4-star apartments of the project and the owners can expect profit of up to VND200 million a year.
With the rent of VND1-3 million per day, the owners will get VND180 million a year from leasing hometel, if the rental capacity is 25 percent per annum. The profit is stable and higher than the profit from bank deposits or other investment channels.
Unlike condotels, which are developed within resort projects and put under the developers’ management, hometel owners have the full right to determine what to do with their houses and they don’t have to share profits with developers.
However, experts pointed out that hometels still have legal risks. The Housing Law doesn’t allow permanent ownership of property used for both residence and business purposes. This excludes very few cases when the land for resort projects is allocated permanently.
Despite the legal risks, JLL Vietnam, a real estate service provider, the market segment will develop rapidly in the time to come because the market has improved in recent years and the information about project has become more transparent.
According to Danh Khoi A Chau Real Estate, in 2016 alone, about 15,000 condotels were marketed. Investors appreciate the potential from resort real estate because of the government’s recent policies on allowing Vietnamese to go to casinos and foreigners to buy houses in Vietnam.
