Housing developer earmarks P800M capex for Cebu projects

CEBU, Philippines - ProHomes Development Inc., and Johndorf Ventures Corporations are ready to provide another 800 housing units in Cebu starting this year, with capital expenditure (capex) of at least P800 million.

This is part of the companies’ P1.5 billion investment for the Visayas and Mindanao market for this year, bulk of the expenditure will be poured in Cebu, said company founder and chairman Richard Lim.

This is the largest capex the company has ever allocated for Cebu since 2004.                     “Cebu is very progressive, dynamic and fast growing,” Lim said announcing that both ProHomes and Jonhdorf will focus on building affordable housing packages for Cebu.

Although, ProHomes already started to enter into the condominium development, through the building of 148 Residences at the downtown area in Cebu, he said this year, his two companies will focus on providing the huge demand for economic housing and town-house type residential products.

Johndorf Ventures is the builder of mid-range residential subdivisions in Visayas and Mindanao, ProHomes Development Inc., on the other hand, focuses in providing economic housing demand for the mainstream market.

Affordable housing units Lim said will be house and lot packages that will be priced not less than P1.5 million.

This year, he announced that his companies will build at least 1,500 affordable housing units in the Visayas and Mindanao market, large part of the units will be built in Cebu.

Lim said upcoming projects in Cebu will be located on Mactan Island (two projects), and one in CarCar in the southern part of the province.

These three projects total to a nine-hectare development project combined. However, Lim said the company is still looking at opportunities to build more projects in Cebu, aside from the three projects that are already up for development in the next few months.

At present, he said that companies is on an active lookout to expand its land bank, in order to plan more housing development projects beyond this year to address the demand for economic and middle-range housing backlog in Cebu alone.

The companies’ land-bank will be expanded beyond the Metro Cebu area, while both ProHomes and Johndorf are seriously considering to extend its development projects to the countryside areas in Cebu province.

In the last 20 years, Lim’s residential development companies, which are established to cater to the different market segments, practically the mainstream market, has already built a total of over 10 thousand houses in Visayas and Mindanao.

It built a Pag-ibig City Homes in Cagayan de Oro City, where these companies are headquartered in a 100-hectare property, that will provide a total of six thousand affordable housing units.

Lim noted that in Cebu, the market for housing is more on the economic and middle-range, with prices that will not go beyond the P2 million level, in a house and lot package.

Record shows that in Cebu alone, there are least 200 thousand consumer base who are needing housing units priced between P100 thousand to P3 million. This particular market base can be tapped by developers, although building economic housing developments both for horizontal and medium-rise building is not as profitable as building units for the middle to higher markets.   (FREEMAN)