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Better loan options could bring growth in housing sector
With last year’s announcement of a P30-billion housing loan assistance that the Home Development Fund will make available for Pag-IBIG Fund members this year, developers of low- and middle-income housing projects are confident to make it big in 2008.
“Vice President Noli De Castro, who is also the chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, vowed to make more homebuyers out of Pag-IBIG members this year, which is great news considering Pag-IBIG now has more than 6.8 million members,” reported Romarico Alvarez, president and CEO of PA Alvarez Properties and Development Corp.
For 13 years now, PA Alvarez Properties and Development Corp. has been one of the leading developers in the small-and medium-scale category.
With projects located mostly around Laguna, in Cavite and more recently in Metro Manila (joint partnership), the firm was awarded the leading developer for socialized housing in Region 4-A by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board.
More members investing
Alvarez informed that he expects more members to invest in buying house and lot considering that Pag-IBIG lowered the interest rates on its housing loan package of P300,000 and below from 9 percent to as low as 6 percent to make them even more affordable to low-income members.
“Moreover, the repayment period was also extended to 30 years so that the monthly amortizations on loans valued at P300,000 have been reduced to P1,798.65 from P2,413.87. For loan packages above P300,000 up to P750,000, the interest rate was reduced from 10 percent to 7 percent, thereby decreasing monthly amortization from P4,387.86 to only P3,326.00,” Alvarez said.
He believes that with more home-buyers being able to buy in the low-and medium-cost housing projects, the country may be able to significantly lessen the housing backlog that now stands at around 4.5 million (75 percent of this backlog is intended for squatters or informal settlers in urban areas).
More units
“This is because this housing segment cloud provide more units per project. For example, the three phases of St. Joseph Village 7, in Cabuyao, Laguna, which total 25 hectares already, offer 2,900 units,” Alvarez shared.
PA Alvarez Properties has developed or is currently developing 10 projects boasting a total number of 8,850 units.
“Because of this prevailing circumstances, more and more developers are also able to gain the trust of banks and other financial institutions and provide us with much-needed fund to sustain operations as well as provide our homebuyers better interest rates and easy repayment plans,” he said.
In fact, the HUDCC from 2004 to 2007 reported a total of 151,437 families who availed themselves of end-user financing from Pag-IBIG amounting to P66.86 billion.
In addition, other government financing institutions also extended loans like the Development Bank of the Philippines to 37,217 families, Government Service Insurance System to 14,539 families, Social Security System to 357 families and Land Bank of the Philippines to 175 families.
By: Charles E. Buban
Published : The Philippine Daily Inquirer
Property section
January 05, 2008
Page B-5
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