DMCI Holdings Inc. said it would venture into housing projects for low-income and lower middle-class families.
The company, known to develop residential projects for the middle-income segment of the market, said it has the scale, resources and expertise “to deliver quality homes to those with modest means.”
Isidro Consunji, the company’s chairman and president, said many Filipino families are earning below P30,000 per household and these people cannot afford to pay a monthly amortization of P10,000 to P15,000.
Consunji said the housing project would be offered at a price lower than the company’s current product offering, averaging at P3.5 million.
“As a new decade begins for our company, we see a reshaping as our growth strategy,” Consunji said, adding that a venture into economic housing could be part of that plan.
“We should distinguish shelter from ownership. These are different things. The government has no program that is purely for shelter, and you cannot equate shelter to ownership of house and lot. What we need is not necessarily ownership of real property, but something that is useable,” Consunji said on the sidelines of the firm’s stockholders’ meeting on Wednesday.
“People, instead of paying P15,000 amortization, could actually pay only P5,000 to P6,000 as shelter fee. It is only the government which is in the position to do that, especially there are a lot of idle lands which are of public dominion,” he said.
He added that idle lands of public dominion, such as those near the Laguna de Bay, could be utilized and be up for bidding for various developers, including DMCI.
“If the economic capability of these beneficiaries improve, then that is the time when they could aim for full ownership of the land. But, for the meantime, a government shelter works fine,” Consunji said.
“It could be in the form of build-operate-transfer, whichever is best suitable.”