Buying Second-Hand Furniture Safely in Ho Chi Minh City
Someone is leaving the country in ten days and their entire apartment is for sale at a third of what it cost. Everyone furnishing a flat in Ho Chi Minh City buys this way, and mostly it works out well.
The exception is a small number of item types that are genuinely risky, and the risk is entirely manageable if you know which they are and what to look at before the item is in your living room.
The risk ranking, from worst to harmless
- Mattresses and upholstered bed bases. The highest risk item there is, and the one we would simply not buy used.
- Fabric sofas and upholstered armchairs. High risk, inspectable with effort, worth buying only from someone whose home you can see.
- Wooden bed frames, particularly slatted ones with joints. Moderate risk, easily inspected.
- Rugs, curtains and soft furnishings. Moderate, and solved entirely by a hot wash before use.
- Hard furniture, appliances, tables, shelving. Low risk. Check the underside and buy freely.
What to look at, in the seller\x27s home
Ask to collect from the apartment rather than meeting somewhere, and look at the item where it currently stands. Ten minutes there tells you more than any question you could ask.
On upholstery, run a finger along the piping and the seams, look under the cushions and inside the zip if there is one, and turn the item over to look at the underside of the frame and the stapled dust cover. On a bed frame, look at the joints, the underside of slats and any recess where a bolt sits.
What you are looking for
Small dark specks in a line or a cluster, which are droppings and are far more visible than the insects themselves. Pale shed skins. Small pearly eggs in a crevice. For wood-boring beetles, small round exit holes with fine powder beneath them.
Also worth noting: a room that smells strongly of insecticide, freshly painted skirting in one corner, or a mattress that has a brand-new protector on it. None of those prove anything, and all three are worth a question.
What to do before it comes into your apartment
- Unwrap and inspect on the balcony or in the corridor, not in a bedroom.
- Vacuum the whole item thoroughly, seams first, and empty the vacuum outside immediately.
- Hot wash and hot dry every removable cover, at 60 °C where the fabric allows.
- Leave hard items in the sun for a few hours where practical — surface heat on a Ho Chi Minh City balcony is genuinely useful.
Timing helps as well. Departing residents sell in a rush during the last fortnight, and that is when items get collected in the dark from a lobby with no chance to look at anything. Buying a week earlier, in daylight, from the apartment, costs nothing and is the difference between an inspection and a transaction.
Street and market furniture
Second-hand shops and roadside furniture sellers are a different proposition from an expat resale, because the item\x27s history is unknown and it has usually been stored outdoors or in a warehouse. For hard furniture that is fine and often excellent value. For anything upholstered we would not, simply because there is no way to ask the question that matters.
Wooden furniture from an outdoor store deserves a look for boring holes and for the soft, papery damage that indicates termite activity, particularly on the parts that stood on the ground.
The one you cannot inspect
A mattress cannot be meaningfully inspected, because the harbourage is inside the seam structure and under the label flap where a torch does not reach, and because the value at stake if you are wrong is the entire bedroom rather than one item. Mattresses are also the cheapest thing to buy new in Vietnam relative to what they cost elsewhere. This is the one place we would spend the money.
Related reading
Species detail is in bed bugs in Ho Chi Minh City and what counts as evidence. For imported goods see shipping furniture into Vietnam, and for storage, wardrobes and fabric pests. If you are furnishing a rental, furnished or unfurnished. Our parent company runs the Vietnamese-language bed bug treatment service.
Global Pest Control is the English-language arm of Khử Trùng Toàn Cầu, based in Thu Duc City. We will look at photographs of an item before you buy it, at no charge.
Common questions
Can I have a second-hand sofa treated before it comes in?
Yes, and for a large upholstered item it is a sensible precaution if you have any doubt. A steam treatment of the seams plus a residual applied to the frame underside is straightforward and can be done on a balcony or in a car park. It is a small cost against the alternative of treating a bedroom afterwards.
Is it safe to buy from a departing colleague?
Usually yes, and being able to see the apartment is exactly what makes it safer than a market purchase. Ask directly whether they ever had a pest issue — most people answer honestly, and someone who becomes evasive has told you what you needed to know.
What about wooden furniture and termites?
Look for small round exit holes with fine powder beneath them, and for wood that sounds hollow when tapped. Termite-damaged furniture is usually obvious once you know to look, and unlike bed bugs it is a risk to the item rather than to the building in most cases. Furniture that stood on soil is worth more attention than furniture that stood on a tiled floor.
