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DAVAO
CITY—Filinvest Land will construct a businessman’s hotel
here this year.
Tristan
Las Marias, Filinvest vice president for the Visayas and
Mindanao, said the hotel will rise in uptown Buhangin
and will cater mainly to business travelers.
Project
details have yet to be finalized but he said the hotel
will not cater to conventions and other functions. “This
is not like the common hotels that we have. We won’t
hold conventions or similar functions.” He said
construction will likely proceed in the third quarter of
the year.
Filinvest held its groundbreaking ceremony Friday to
start the construction of two condominium buildings in a
2.3-hectare property on Ecowest Drive in Ecoland
Subdivision in Matina, south of downtown.
The two
buildings form part of the seven five-story condominium
project scheduled over three years. Called One Oasis
Davao, the project will comprise four condominium and
three condotel buildings. The Filinvest executive added
that all 120 units in the first building have been
already sold.
Another
Filinvest project in the area is the upscale Kembali
Coast, a subdivision with a long beach front in Kaputian
District in the Island Garden City of Samal.
Most old
Asian cities and capitals are moving toward condominium
living as urban dwellers try to save due to the
continued oil-price hikes.
“People
are tending towards the city centers, where shopping
malls, churches, schools and places of work are
accessible from their houses or housing units,” said
Andrew T. Gotianun Jr., vice president at Filinvest
Land.
Gotianun
told BusinessMirror here during the groundbreaking rites
of the company’s two condominium buildings here Friday,
that “the tendency now is to shift to condo living,
because of the high price of oil and its domino effect,
many are afraid to travel too far from their
residences.”
“This is
becoming part of city living, especially in old cities
and capitals in Asia,” he said. “People want to cut
travel time and cost. The price of oil is becoming very
high, and people just want to be in the most accessible
location as possible,” he said.
He said
the capitals like
Seoul and
Bangkok
have built already constructed several condominium
units, mostly high-rises “and very affordable.” He
added that “last year alone, my friend in Thailand
constructed 250 units in one year.”
The rich
in some Asian capitals may still prefer living inside
gated communities and other prime estates in the
countryside or rural areas, but “many others are moving
into the city centers.”
The
global slowdown, prompted by problems in the US subprime
housing loans, has so far created less impact in the
Philippines, at least in the real-estate sector,
Gotianun noted. “There’s been little effect. It’s really
different from our problem in our construction and
real-estate sector in the 1990s and it would not likely
to return with this slowdown,” he said.
“I
think, our Filipino clients based in the US, or those
that rely mostly on the dollar and even those in the
Middle East as the currencies are dollar-based would be affected by the
slowdown.
He said
clients from euro-based countries have not been affected
and Gotianun said Filinvest has continued to receive a
lot of inquiries on their real- estate projects from
these buyers.
Gotianun
said that the company’s outlook on the Philippine
economy remained bullish and ascribed this to the “more
stable banking system with low interest regime, a
supportive and well-managed government and a clientele
base composed mostly of overseas Filipino workers and
Filipino expatriates.
“The
borrowing rates have been consistently low and not
restrictive, and I think our banks and government doing
quite a good job, considering the political pressures
that they have encountered,” he said. He accredited Vice
President Noli de Castro for the “quick action on the
plaints of the real-estate developers. There have been
so many policies that were changed.”
He added
that the company’s confidence in the economy can be seen
from the continued construction of subdivisions and
condominiums across the country. He said that a quarter
of the company’s exposure is in Mindanao.
“My
family is from Mindanao, and we know quite a lot about
this island,” he said, citing the family investments in
banking and other real-estate ventures. |
