RIDING on Cebu’s robust housing sector, motorcycle manufacturer and distributor Norkis Group is venturing into housing development through its partnership with Cañedo Equity Ventures (CEV).
Their first project together is a 600-home subdivision in a 10-hectare property in Barangay Cogon, Compostela and a 6.7-hectare memorial park in a separate property within the barangay. These projects are expected to be launched in the last quarter of the year.
CEV’s property arm, Philippine Paramount Property Ventures Inc. (PPVI), will be the developer while Norkis Group is the land owner.
“We see Compostela as a potential business hub,” said PPVI president Abelardo Cañedo Jr., citing a future terminal, port, and commercial projects of the town.
The housing project in Compostela is also PPVI’s first project in the north of Cebu, after being largely concentrated in the south of Metro Cebu, specifically in the town of Minglanilla and Carcar City, for the past decade.
The company is spending P1 billion for the residential development. It will construct 543 housing units, most of which will be single detached homes.
“We believe there are (buyers for mid to high-end housing in Compostela). Some people want to migrate. That’s how real estate grew, even in Luzon. In the past 20 years, there was no mid-market outside Metro Manila. Now you see high-end market in Laguna. Right now, developers are coming up with high-end communities beside Cebu City,” added PPVI senior vice president Emmanuel Victor Estrella.
As for the planned memorial park, it will spend some P200 million for the development, which will have 13,000 garden lots.
In addition, CEV chair Filomena Cañedo said the partnership with the Norkis Group brings more expansions for PPVI, a homegrown company that is set for provincial expansions in key cities in the Visayas and Mindanao starting 2019.
Estrella identified the the cities of Iloilo, Bohol, Tacloban, Davao, and Cagayan de Oro as areas where there are ongoing lot acquisitions.
Onwards, Estrella said PPVI will enter the Luzon property market through Batangas where the Norkis Group has an exisiting property. Aside from horizontal housing developments, Cañedo Jr. said PPVI will also go into medium-rise buildings and hotels.
Company executives remain bullish about the housing property in the country.
Based on the central bank’s latest residential real estate price index (RREPI), which measures the average changes in prices of all types of housing units across the country, average housing prices nationwide declined 4.6 percent year-on-year in the second quarter.
For areas outside National Capital Region (NCR), prices of single detached/attached housing units declined 10.3 percent year-on-year, while those of condominium units and townhouses went up by 5.5 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively.