Surging lot prices prompt highland housing projects

As developments and industrialization is rapidly increasing in the province’s lowlands resulting to an increase of lot prices, housing developers are starting to eye the mountainous areas to utilize for their other development projects for the upscale to the middle-end markets.

“Here in Metro Cebu the primary concern is the availability of properties because most of the lots are already utilized and if there will be vacant spaces, it is not big enough to accommodate housing projects especially economic housing that can enable us developers to reach ideal profit margin,” said 8990 Housing Development Corporation Atty. Anthony Vincent S. Sotto, AGM for Legal and Administration.

Sotto discussed that for Cebu’s real estate market, the driving force is location and price because most of the consumer base are not natives of Cebu and they come from different provinces from Cebu’s neighboring islands.

He said that mostly high-end or upscale housing projects like condominiums and apartments are built within the city because developers and owners can produce desired profit margin because of its appraised worth. 

But compared to their other on-going land developments like in Davao, Sotto said that Cebu’s market has a different demand. In Davao as well as in other provinces, buyers would demand to have abundant land for them to put up a garden in the backyard for extra activities but here in Cebu most would prefer single attach or single detach units with ideally 90 square meters of lot, Sotto said.

“Majority of the market here is more concerned with a property’s price and location because all they need is a place to live while they are in town so they do not need to have a bigger property,” said Sotto.

In terms of price range, he said that the standard these days for the high-end market in Cebu ranges from about P5 million and above, and this is the reason why there is a seeming monopoly for players in this segment because there is not much competition.

While for the case of economic housing wherein unit prices would range from P300, 000 to P1.2 million price bracket, there are several existing players because there is a considerably bigger market to be captured. —Rhia de Pablo