|
CEBU CITY—Real-estate
and construction leaders in the country are looking to
tap more the foreign-based market to bring in more fresh
money and keep the current heyday of the land sector
going.
Chamber
of Real Estate and Builders’ Association (Creba)
president Pedro Tario said the very low interest rates
for housing loans at present can only be sustained with
the continuous influx of dollar remittances to the
country.
“We
should keep the money coming and give our people a lot
of buying power. We see this growth sustained, unless
the government squanders with all our dollars,” Tario
told reporters in
Cebu .
Tario
said the very low interest rates, with some banks giving
up to 9-percent rates for prime loans, down to more than
30-percent rates in the late 1980s, show that a lot of
money is moving around.
“The
government should do all it can to increase remittances
so the country could get greater dollar revenues and
keep a lot of money moving around,” he said.
“Infrastructure has improved tremendously in the last
two to three years and we should sustain that.”
Creba is
hoping to tap more of the dollar-earning foreign market
—OFWs and expats among others, to fuel further growth in
the real- estate sector.
According to Creba vice president for public affairs
Edith Manansala, close to 70 percent of real-estate
development in
Manila are sold to foreign-currency-earning Filipinos.
She said
the industry will double from the P6-billion real-estate
industry in Metro Manila to P12 billion in the next few
years.
Even in
Cebu, the foreign-based buyers are fueling much of the
real- estate growth, said Jose Ma. Gianzon, vice
president for sales and marketing of Fuente Triangle
Development Corp. Inc.
Gianzon
said their 28-story loft-type condominium project Fuente
Tower 3 is already 70-percent presold, mostly to
foreign-based buyers.
“We have
hired marketing officers, mostly in the US, to tap this
sector and it has proved to be very successful,” he
said. |
