A REAL estate professional has observed a strong demand for properties that can be converted into warehouses, especially from business establishments in Luzon.
Samuel Lao, Philippine Real Estate Boards Inc. (Pareb) national director, said the most preferred locations include the City of Naga in the south and the town of Consolacion in the north.
“For warehouses, buyers are looking for as small as 1,000 square meters to multiple hectares,” said Lao, immediate past president of Cebu Real Estate Boards Inc (Cereb).
With the Cebu International Port expected to be constructed in Tayud, Consolacion, this makes the town the most ideal location. The City of Naga is also an attractive location, having positioned itself as the industrial hub of Cebu in the south, according to Lao.
In another development, global property website Lamudi said in its 2015 research report published recently that the trend of development now is in affordable housing.
“There has been an increase in the number of new applications for low-income housing. The number of LTS (license to sell) for socialized housing doubled as of August 2015 (year-to-date) from the same period in 2014,” Lamudi Philippines said, in a report released last week.
“There has also been significant increases in numbers of LTS issued by the HLURB (Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board) for mid-income housing (56.58 percent increase) and low-cost condominiums (22.18 percent),” it added.
The property sector in the next years will continue to be robust, said industry officials.
“While the property industry has already been doing very well in the past few years, the sector is seen to grow even more robustly, driven by the continued positive outlook on the economy and the projected expansion of outsourcing industry within the next five years,” said former chief of the National Economic and Development Authority, now head of the Philippine Competition Commission Arsenio Balisacan.
The government official said this during a property summit last year in Manila, noting rapid urbanization and the rise of the residential sector as key sources of growth for the property market. He said that as of 2010, 48.6 percent of the population lived in urban areas. The number is projected to rise to 56.3 percent by 2030 and 66 percent by 2050.
Lao said housing developments in Cebu have now expanded up to Argao in the south and Carmen in the north.