The answer for desperate house-hunters can be found in a glance at the reigning "illegal laws."

A home's value increases by a third if it is nearly legal, i.e., legal under local laws but not national ones. This means the exchange of a "house-ownership certificate" signed by the police and district people’s committee. Value drops by a third if the house is owned by a state company and is sold under the table, and if it has no legal status, i.e., no papers.

Further affecting the value is the official price of the house; when a property is exchanged, there is a one-time tax of 30 percent turned over to the Ministry of Finance (MoF), as stated by the seller. The lower the stated value, therefore, the more of the buyer's cash the seller can claim for himself.

There are also practical factors, often obscure and impossible to confirm in advance. Perhaps the most valuable feature a home can have is its close proximity to a ranking official. It implies that the neighborhood is first to get clean water and reliable power. Most valuable to some is a well-built foundation that can accommodate additions, as their families expand.

Then there are outright risks. A wayward son might suddenly appear to demand return of the property, exploiting a law that requires all family members to sign the contract between buyer and seller. Usually this requires a payoff -- $800 is light. Or consider the risk of buying a property without realizing somebody else bought it as well. Earlier this year, four men in Dong Nai province shot each other in such a dispute.

Further, vengeful neighbors of the seller practically guarantee years of trouble. One might find that he must sneak into his house after midnight for years, until the change of ownership settles into the community.

Especially considering that land ownership is illegal regardless of the legitimacy of the home purchase, one might wonder exactly what it is he’s purchased. Said the Vietnamese professional who shelled out $60,000 for half a Hanoi house with no bathroom or kitchen, "By buying a house we are being risky and adventurous."

While the depth of this market is obscure, one MoF source guessed that hundreds of thousands of properties change hands annually, in exchange for billions of dollars.

Why are so many willing to be so risky and adventurous? Simple. "Real-estate is the only market in Vietnam that floats. You must rush into it, gamble, win or lose," said 50-year old Mr. Hung, son of a state-owned electric company executive who was given use of a French villa, now crumbling, in a prime Hanoi location.

Hung gambled on a house several years ago and lost (poor location and crooked contractors). Today he is back to serving beef soup to customers in his living room, as he has done for decades. His wife cooks.

He hadn't much to lose, aside from some cash that he didn't really need. Every neighborhood and village is populated by those with the same privileged housing. For the right to live in their current home, Hung and his wife are obliged to pay the state the equivalent of just five dollars per month, though he said nobody has come around to collect for years. The soup is famously delicious and Hung seems content -- even relieved -- having survived his engagement with the New Economy. Hung's cavalier investment attitude spurred property inflation.

As pivotal in the inflation of local land values has been cavalier spending by foreign investors. Their millions, locals quickly caught on, were easily gotten. Foreigners' interaction with the market came at an entirely different angle than locals.

Foreign direct investors (FDI) wishing to build factories or office buildings had been required to enter a 70-30 equity joint venture with a state-owned company. The contribution of their local partner is, with few exceptions, a single asset: land. Therefore, for a 70-30 $10 million venture, it is not difficult to presume the valuation of the local company's contribution -- $3 million.

Foreign investors served to set useful benchmarks for land values. The FDI factor increases its impact by fat expat housing allowances, and has served over the years to inject hundreds of millions of new dollars into the economy, much of it into the real-estate market.

Yet to dismiss this narrative as "greedy native meets gullible foreigner" would be a mistake and possibly cause one to overlook the more important point.

For it is this "free market" in which thousands of Vietnamese have, at last found ground to exercise their long pent-up entrepreneurial ambitions and wherewithal.

Dressed in a stylish, western-bought suit and standing beside the large desk in her sunlit office, a Vietnamese "political specialist" with a foreign real-estate firm explained that Vietnamese entrepreneurs were naturally drawn to this arena. As is standard here, she requested that her name not be used for this article.