DAVAO CITY—Around 3 percent, or P27 billion, of the estimated P980 billion in remittances sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to their families last year were spent in real-estate purchases, a real-estate company operating a popular online search portal for available Philippine real-estate properties said.
Arthur M. Gonzales, vice president for Mindanao of FilipinoHomes.com, a Web-linked real-
estate company, said that OFWs funneled this much money last year to the renting and buying of houses and lots, commercial properties and other real-estate investments in the Philippines.
He said the amount represented a sizable portion of the total $22.8 billion (P980 billion) in cash remittances sent home by more or less 10 million OFWs last year.
“This year we expect OFWs to spend as much as P40 billion on acquiring properties,” he said.
Overseas Filipino spending has taken an interesting turn, from mainly acquiring properties to settle their families on a house and lot they can call their own, to looking at commercial properties for business and other income-generating ventures, Gonzales said.
“Many are getting practical, to see their remittance earnings [generating] revenues so that they could be assured of money when they go home after their contracts abroad,” he said.
“OFWs are still our main spenders in real estate,” according to Gonzales. “And this makes it more stable for the Philippines to ward off fears of a property bubble that hit Asia in 1997.”
“Unlike before, in the Asian financial
meltdown, and even in the US mortgage crisis, the industry is being supported by a sector that has money,” he said.
In the US subprime-mortgage debacle, the financial crisis it generated was driven mainly by the sale of unfunded properties and (similar) instruments.
He said the Philippines was expected to ride high on real estate “with more people still looking for properties than for the latter to supply the demand.”
“More cities are growing, and the demand for house and lot, commercial and industrial properties are also increasing, and buyers’ preference are also spread across the nation,” he added.
Gonzales said FilipinoHomes.com was established as a web-site portal in 2009 and is one of the leading web-site portals for both Filipinos and foreigners looking to invest in real-estate properties in the Philippines.
In 2013 the portal monitored not less than P8 billion worth of real-estate transactions in the Philippines. This did not include transactions coursed through the other real-estate companies and Internet web sites, as well as through the free social-networking sites.
The FilipinoHomes.com was put up by leading Cebuano realtor Anthony Leuterio, who also operates his own real-estate company.