As smart home gradually catches attention of property developers, smart home and building automation solutions for high-end residential buildings are the common interest of real estate firms in Vietnam.
As smart home gradually catches attention of property developers, smart home and building automation solutions for high-end residential buildings are the common interest of real estate firms in Vietnam. Le Hoang Chau, Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, indicated that energy control will be the second largest demand after home security. However, smart home is still a long way to go in Vietnam, and a standard for this industry must be set up to build a better connected living.
1. Please introduce Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA).
Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association is a NGO with more than 800 enterprises and individual members, including real-estate developers, investors, constructors and the dealers. The association also has special members like bankers as well as both domestic and overseas funds.
Important members in HoREA include some of the leading property developers in Vietnam such as VinGroup, Novaland, FLC, Hung Thinh Corp, Nam Long Corp, and Dai Quang Minh; and constructors like Hoa Binh, Coteccons. Just to name a few.
2. What kind of property projects take up the most market share in the housing market in Vietnam?
Currently we have no concrete market numbers about the proportion, however, we clearly witness a sparkle in the residential building markets in Vietnam. Smart home or building automation solutions are now the common interest of all the real estate firms, as most of the profit we are gaining comes from the residential sector, especially, in the luxury, or high-end building segment.
Apart from residential buildings, the latest trend is the Condotel, which is a condominium but operated as a hotel, offering short-term rentals. Condotels are getting hotter day by day among property developments in Vietnam.
Pioneering projects in Vietnam, such as Vinhomes Central Park, Sala City, or Phu My Hung, are not only construct buildings but also create a complete living environment for residents. With the automation system integrated to people’s lives, residents are connected with neighborhood parks, parking lots, shopping malls, entertainment centers in a project.
3. What are the most popular smart home solutions in Vietnam?
Home security, definitely. It is the biggest part of the pie, as we could easily set up a security system without rewiring or changing any interior decoration and design. Moreover, there are plenty of choices for home security products in affordable prices.
Though security solutions are dominating, another upcoming trend is energy control. In fact, we can barely see the separation of energy control and home automation. I would say that “green energy” and “energy saving” are the key words that catch buyers’ eyes.
Imagine if you want to save energy usage for lighting, you could simply open the curtains. Some families have set up a solar-energy system integrated with home automation control. The two systems support each other while users only need a few clicks on their smartphone app for management. Similar implementation in Vietnamese homes is potential in the near future.
As for the popular brands in Vietnam, I would say products from G7 countries are preferred among high-class homeowners who spent the most for such equipments. For price-oriented markets, Chinese brands and products still own great prevalence.
4. In developing property projects, what is the working pattern in Vietnam?
For those big and mega-scale projects, decision making depends totally on the developers, as they are in charge of designing and engineering all systems from the initial stage. Cost, energy consumption, and multiple factors are taken into their consideration.
In most cases, the president of the developer group is the decision maker. Decisions are supported by consultation and discussion with their professional technical team based on field research and reports of product specifications. In other cases, constructors like Hoa Binh and Coteccons can decide for systems as they own design team themselves.
5. In Vietnam, what is potentially driving smart home solutions forward?
While choosing smart home systems, quality and price of the solutions are the two most important requirements whilst technical issues like cross-brand compatibility are also a major topic. The public is recently talking much about Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things. As a result, in larger scales like smart cities, compatibility of connected devices and solutions will be an advantage to build a complete system.
The government and the city council have just agreed on a project to build HCMC to be a “Smart City”. The agreement will bring a huge chance for manufacturers as such development will start from basic infrastructures, creating large demand for equipment, technology, software, and total solution. During the first phase until 2020, there will be a focus on cloud computing infrastructure, big data analysis, building a shared data warehouse, and developing an open data ecosystem for the city. For those new residential projects, I think “smart” isn’t just a trend but a “must-have”.
In addition, a standard for everything in smart home industry and related education are what we really need for now. References from associations or manufacturers, as well as precious experience from industry leaders are a key step before mass implementations begin. We are looking forward to some seminars that can actively stimulate discussion in smart home industry.