Local developer chooses to build horizontal houses over condos
CONFIDENT in the demand for horizontal housing in Cebu, a local developer committed itself to focus their investments in such developments.
M&E Family Realty Development Corp. president Basil B. Ting maintains that horizontal housing, for the upscale market, will be the company’s thrust over the next years.
On Thursday, the developer broke ground on its fourth project, South City Homes Minglanilla in Barangay Tungkop.
The subdivision is on a 1.5-hectare property and will have 71 houses priced from P4.8 million to P9 million.
According to the company’s marketing coordinator Gloria Gonzales, they anticipate seafarers as their top buyers, similar to their previous projects.
“Ninety percent of our buyers are seafarers,” she said. Seafarers are generally compensated higher than the land-based overseas Filipino workers, which allows them to have bigger purchasing powers than their peers, Gonzales noted.
Ting said that while they are focused on building homes for the highend market, they plan to cater to the middle market segment in the future to serve the growing housing needs.
The family is also scouting for more properties in Metro Cebu to support their expansion plans. Ting said this might still be in the southern part of the metropolis.
Existing projects of the developer totaling 142 homes are located in Labangon and Bulacao in Cebu City and in Talisay City.
In the Philippines, there is a 1.4-million backlog in public housing, according to newly-appointed Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) Chair Leni Robredo. The agency projects this to increase to 5.5 million homes.
This backlog is a combination of victims of calamities, the homeless and those living in dilapidated houses.
Robredo said she targets to address the backlog by the end of her sixyear term.