Marc Townsend, CBRE's managing director, said about 51,000 expats were registered as living and working in Ho Chi Minh City as of August 2007, 35 percent of which are Korean.

Townsend is predicting this number could rise by 25-35 percent in 2008, as more multinational corporations invest in Vietnam and hire foreign labor from Asia, Europe and the US

This foreign labor will inevitably be looking for residential leases in the big cities where international companies locate their head offices, said the director.

Young Asian professionals who work in Vietnam are satisfied with more basic apartments, which only need to supply them with a few mod-cons and a convenient location, according to Townsend.

Korean, Taiwanese and Singaporean workers tend to choose local housing, typically staying for two years, while Japanese, American, British and Australian tenants, usually stay for a year and prefer more luxurious internationally-branded serviced apartments.

The real estate researcher said that, at present, there is an imbalance in the market, with 3,000 total apartments with an occupancy rate of about 90 percent, as of September.

The supply-demand gap is worse in Hanoi, said the researcher, as the occupancy rate in the capital has reached 95.1 percent in a total of 1,347 apartments.

More projects are under construction, with estimates predicting the gap between supply and demand could be filled by 2010.

These projects include the $223-million Kumho Plaza with a total of 260 units, the $125-million Times Square with 139 units, and the Sailing Tower with 50 units, which will pro-vide additional apartments for expats.

Hanoi will also witness new sup-plies from the 88-apartment Skyline, 170-apartment Fraser Suites, 206-unit Somerset Hoa Binh and 170-unit The Landmark.

Rents, which stand at $13-26 per square meter for locally-branded serviced studio apartments, and $32-38 for the same apartment with an inter-national brand, is expected to rise by 15-20 percent in 2008, said the researcher.

Reported by Minh Quang