Hanoi is the capital and the country's second market after Ho Chi Minh City: 8.8 million residents, the entire machinery of state, the embassies and the head offices of Vietnamese corporations. The 2025 administrative reform left its borders untouched — Hanoi is one of the few of the old 63 regions that stayed exactly as it was.
What Hanoi offers a buyer is not the sea but dense urban demand: tenants from the diplomatic corps, expatriates working for industrial groups, and the Vietnamese middle class. The climate differs too — winter can drop to 12 °C, and there is no resort-style season here at all.
Tay Ho, the West Lake district, is the historic expatriate address: embassies, international schools, the Ciputra estate. Nam Tu Liem and Tay Mo in the west hold the largest volume of modern supply — big estates such as Vinhomes Smart City and CapitaLand's projects. Gia Lam, on the left bank of the Red River, is Vinhomes Ocean Park, effectively a self-contained town twenty minutes from the centre across the bridge. Dong Anh to the north is the Noi Bai airport direction and the site of the newest mega-projects.
21.6 km of metro is in commercial service — line 2A Cat Linh–Ha Dong and the elevated section of line 3 as far as Cau Giay; the underground stations through to the railway station are promised for 2027. In June 2026 the city broke ground on five new lines at once, some 303 km in total, targeted at 2030. Ring Road 4 runs 113 km through Hanoi, Hung Yen and Bac Ninh: the parallel carriageways open during 2026, the expressway itself from 2027. The Lao Cai–Hanoi–Hai Phong railway started construction in December 2025.
The Hanoi market leans heavily towards townhouses and land plots, and a foreigner cannot own land — apartments and houses inside commercial housing projects are available, bare plots and homes outside projects are not. The real choice is therefore narrower than the listings suggest, and the first step is checking the status of the specific building.
How a transaction works and which documents to read is set out in the guide to buying property for foreigners.