Britain's Savills, an international property services provider, and Vietnam Land SSG Ltd., yesterday signed a service contract which appoints Savills as the property manager for Saigon Pearl condo project developed by the latter in HCMC.

Lo Kwok Luen, executive director of Vietnam Land SSG Ltd., said in a statement: "We hope that the collaboration with professional property management will enhance our quality of service and supply great urban to our customers. Our potential home-owners could have the perfect finish with Saigon Pearl."

Savills is a leading global real estate service provider listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The company, established in 1855, which it has over 180 offices and associates throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. In Vietnam, the company was established in 1995 and Savills merged with Chesterton Petty Vietnam in2007. The company received a 100% foreign owned business license in October 1998 to provide a full range of property consultancy services in Vietnam.

Aubrey Adams, Group chief executive of Savills, earlier said that after 10 years of its presence in Vietnam as a representative office, Savills found this was an appropriate time to expand operations in the country.

Savills Vietnam provides comprehensive agency, management and consultancy services.

The Saigon Pearl project comprises of eight twin apartment buildings of 37 stories each, four office towers and a commercial complex, all covering 10.3 hectares of land at 92 Nguyen Huu Canh Street in Binh Thanh District. The total cost amounts to over US$500 million.

The project will develop 2,144 high-end apartments, with each measuring 82-328 square meters, and office towers will have 13 to 25 stories. A 40,000-square-meter recreational and commercial complex will also be built to serve the local people.

There will also be a kindergarten, a world-class school, and an indoor car park that can accommodate over 1,200 cars and 9,000 motorbikes. The first phase includes two 37-floor apartment towers with 530 apartments and a clubhouse, a swimming-pool, a gym, a spa, which are planned for completion by 2008.

It takes about five minutes to the city center, so all of the first phase's apartments were sold out, according to Vietnam Land SSG, a joint venture between Hong Kong's Vietnam Land Ltd. and SSG Construction and Real Estate Joint Stock Company. The latter was established by five local companies that won the land tender for the site.

Source: Saigon Times