RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY PRICES DOWN IN Q1 ON LOW DEMAND

THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said residential property prices declined in the country in the first three months of the year, as demand dipped during the period.

Based on BSP’S Residential Real Estate Price Index (RREPI), residential real estate prices of various types of new housing units in the country contracted by 4.2 percent year-on-year (YOY). The Central Bank said this is largely due to “subdued demand for residential properties amid the pandemic”.

Slower demand for property purchases were indicated by lower real estate loans during the period. In the first three months of 2021, the number of residential property loans granted for all types of new housing units in the Philippines contracted by 14.7 percent compared to last year and 32 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.

Broken down by type of housing unit, most of the residential property loans were used for the acquisition of condominium units at 52 percent, followed by single detached/attached houses at 38.6 percent and townhouses at 8.1 percent.

By area, the contraction in nationwide residential property prices was driven mainly by the downtrend of property prices in the National Capital Region (NCR), which fell by 10 percent relative from the same period last year. This is the third consecutive quarter of decline for NCR property prices.

“This was due to the decrease in the prices of condominium units, which outweighed the increase in the prices of duplexes, single detached/attached houses, and townhouses,” the BSP said.

Meanwhile, property prices in areas outside NCR rose marginally by 0.8 percent from the same period last year as the growth in the prices of townhouses and condominium units more than offset the drop in the prices of duplexes and single detached/ attached houses.

The BSP’S RREPI was first published in 2016, it was developed in response to the scarcity of official data on the property sector of the Philippines.

Earlier this month, BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno announced that it is set to release a commercial property price index by this year.

“Together, these two indicators may be used to monitor the developments in the Philippine property sector as a whole and their linkages with the other sectors in the economy,” Diokno told reporters earlier.