Increase in long-term expats have lead to massive spikes in rent here in Danang

One of the things that most of the expats will say that they really like about living in Da Nang as well as other cities in Vietnam is that it has a very low cost of living. Most of this is still true but not in the case of longer-term rentals. Everyone's buildings are becoming more expensive with some of the units getting near double the price.

It wasn't that long ago that if you were willing to live in a studio room that you could do so for less than $200 a month. If you wanted something more upmarket with a separate bedroom and maybe multiple bathrooms - which is something I find a bit silly in a 1-bedroom apartment - you could do so quite easily for $300.

If you wanted a place with parking, a gym, and a rooftop swimming pool you could do that quite easily for $400.

Those are all in the past now though I'm afraid, as Da Nang has become one of the hottest spots for digital nomads that used to live in other parts of SE Asia.

This is an example of what I am talking about. This is a fake 1-bedroom apartment that they frequently list as being a 1-bedroom when it is really a studio with a wall between this area and a seriously weak and small kitchen. I couldn't endure living in a place like this because I don't want my sofa to be right next to my bed. I want my living room and my bedroom to be separate rooms. If the kitchen shares the same room as the living room I am ok with that. But I also don't like crappy small kitchens

This my friends, is a "kitchen" according to the listing. You have one range-top cooker with that awful induction electric cooking which is apparently the only legal way of having a range in apartment buildings here, and you have a half sized fridge which I suppose would be adequate because what are you actually going to cook on one hob? Once you take in the sink area you really don't even have any space to prepare anything to eat anyway. Good thing eating out is really inexpensive, I guess.

They always try to kind of trick people into thinking a place is better than it is by putting pictures of the common areas in the listing and sometimes using trick photography to make that look better than it actually is as well.

It's tough for me to be able to tell what it is that I hate the most about this. The really uncomfortable seating, the useless tables, the fake grass, or the fact that the pool is so small that I don't think you can really even get any exercise in it.

I really don't like when they try to fool you by getting a better angle. I'm not retarded enough to fall for that. are other people? I guess they must be because the agents do this in nearly every picture.

When i first moved here 6-7 years ago an apartment of this caliber maybe would be able to squeeze $300 out of some hapless person that doesn't know any better but for the most part people would sit on it and wait until it dropped to $200. Lets' find a middle ground and say $250 a month ok? That is about 6.5 million VND per month.

So what do you think they are asking for it now?

10 million would already be crazy but because of the demand that we have these days this place is asking 16.9 million a month and guess what? They will get it.

That's close to $650 a month, for this piece of crap that would just make me depressed if I lived in it.

This isn't even some sort of extreme example either as I will be pointing out in the following weeks or so. My own rent went up $100 a month and my landlord, who is actually a really nice person, made some sort of BS excuse about taxes and what not but the reality of the situation is that they know that they can get more for it than they were previously getting and by ONLY raising it $100 they are actually doing us a favor. Others in this area have had their rent nearly doubled and the landlords at those buildings are more hardcore and just tell them "if you don't want to pay it you need to move out." Often, people are protected by their leases to some degree but the owners know that they can break that lease if they claim to be doing renovations.

This is something I will get into later because renovations are a joke here as well.

The bottom line here is that if you or someone you know was contemplating coming to Da Nang because it is really cheap just know that those glory days are kind of already behind us.