Shipping conglomerate ventures into real estate

Homegrown conglomerate Gothong Southern Group of Companies will venture into commercial real estate development projects in Cebu.

Through its property development arm, Gothong Southern Properties, the group's chairman and chief executive officer Bob Gothong said that although the company has already built residential properties mainly for its employees, this time it is expanding its operations to take advantage of the fertile property market in Cebu.

Gothong said that the company is interested in condominium, medium to high-rise development, and is already eyeing a specific site for the project that will be launched soon.

Gothong Southern is just one of the many prominent Cebuano business names or families with different line of businesses, who are now putting their money in real estate.

Gothong's company is also part of the recently formed consortium composed of five Cebuano firms' pooling their efforts to build a P5 billion to P6 billion residential and office buildings project at the Cebu Business Park (CBP).

According to Gothong, his company is initially interested in residential development.

Economist Bernardo Villegas earlier urged Cebuano landlords to develop their own projects in Cebu, before developers from outside could exploit its promising real estate prospects.

Villegas said real estate had been following the higher growth rate in the past couple of years and is still expected to continue at least in the medium term, before it slows down.

Unlike other countries whose economies had been badly affected by real estate burst, the Philippines on the other hand is following a high growth path.

This optimism is also recently reaffirmed by latest survey indicating that Cebu City is the number one most searched cities outside of Metro Manila for property-seekers.

In a survey, global online property guide and service provider Lamudi Philippines found out that Cebu City is ostensibly the most in-demand among online property-seekers looking to buy or rent properties outside of Metro Manila.

The survey indicated that 55 percent of property-hunters who visited the Lamudi website from January to September 2016 were looking for houses, followed by apartments and condos in Cebu City.