"Still, something was missing. My career reached the crossroads, and I felt I had enough experience to move on. It wasn’t just a question of higher pay either, and that’s the truth," he said. The day he left the real estate firm he faithfully served for more than a decade – with the intention of founding his own firm – he received a call from another company that offered to double what he was receiving.
"It seemed like the right decision to join them at the time, but after 14 months, I realized that while the monetary rewards were great, I still felt unfulfilled personally. This reinforced my earlier belief that all my work experience, all my knowledge, all these could be better applied on something I myself owned," Alfred said.
His decision to strike out on his own could be attributed to the entrepreneurial training he received from the Asian Institute of Management. "It played a major part in my moving on and applying what I knew, rather than just sticking out with a company and eventually retiring. Going on my own would be tough, but I felt prepared and ready for the challenge," he said. With this conviction, Landco was born in February 1990.
Just like any start-up company, capital was very limited. Alfred had a lot of big ideas but did not have enough money to start a big business. Rather than concentrate in Metro Manila and do the same things that everyone else was doing, Landco went trailblazing where other developers were hesitant to go, thus achieving its moniker as the maverick of the Philippine real estate industry. By extending its reach beyond Metro Manila, Landco became one of the most exposed to different parts of the country, in all regions and most of the municipalities.
"To keep ourselves afloat while waiting for the situation to improve, we went into the consultancy business, offering our advice to other developers and landowners. In a five-year period we took on around 90 projects. It was around this time that Metro Pacific took notice of what we were doing, and eventually came in as our partners," Alfred said.
Things began to pick up for the real estate industry during the boom years of the Ramos administration, but this new optimism clouded everyone’s better judgment. When the economy was bullish in the mid-’90s, many real estate companies became highly leveraged. They borrowed money from the banks to build up a "land bank" (the acquisition of land with the intention of later development/urbanization).
"We did the same, at one point we had 2,220 hectares of land all over the country. At around this time we launched Punta Fuego, which turned out to be a big hit, and we thought that bigger things would follow," he said. The bubble burst not long after, and by 1997 Landco’s dreams of expansion were thwarted by the Asian economic crisis.
"As early as 1996, my dear friend and mentor Manny V. Pangilinan approached me and advised me of unforeseen problems if our debt situation was not put under control. He told me that if the company was to survive, we had to whittle down our debts. So in 1997, we decided that whether or not the economic situation improved, we had to settle our debts and get out of the land banking position. What we would do was to focus on what Landco was really set up for, which was real estate development," Alfred said.
Banking on his 24 years of experience, Alfred confidently moved forward and boosted the company’s attempts to weather the storm. However, getting their competitive edge back would not be easy, and Alfred knew that they had to "bite the bullet."
"With my key executive team, we put in place a five-year plan. One of the toughest things I had to do was cut down the workforce. During the boom years of the 1990s, we had about 600 employees. Today, we are down to around 220 people. The strange thing is, with a third of the workforce, we are now three times more productive," he said. Today, thanks to the plan and prudence exercised during those difficult years, Landco’s debt is at a manageable level and is now one of the most stable real estate companies in the country.
"My son Alby was working on his master’s thesis when he came up with the inspiration for Leisure Farms. Previously unheard of in the country, leisure farming, or "agritainment" as we’ve dubbed it at Landco, has now become one of our most widely imitated concepts. I’ve said it before, when the big companies copy you, then you must be doing something right," he said.
Successes like these have cemented Landco’s reputation as a visionary, trailblazer, pioneer and innovator. And when competitors try to get their foot on the door, Landco has already moved on to a new concept. In that aspect, Landco has stayed one step ahead of the competition.
"Perhaps what I find even more fulfilling is that Landco has become a name that not only the end-consumer – the homebuyer – can bank on, we have also gained the confidence of our partners, the original landowners of the properties that we’ve developed through the years. Landco derives great satisfaction in delivering the goods: we’ve never made promises that we can’t fulfill, both to the landowners and to potential lot buyers. From the moment we conceptualize a project up to the time we deliver the titles, everyone concerned knows he’s getting his money’s worth," Alfred said.
Landco has also partnered with the Escudero family to develop the 400-hectare Escudero estate covering the towns of San Pablo, Laguna, and Dolores and Tiaong in Quezon into a mixed residential-commercial, master-planned community. Part of this includes the high-end MonteLago Nature Estates development. Composed of three gated communities, MonteLago will be developed in the mold of Landco’s signature blue-label first home communities with outstanding resort-type amenities, uniform architectural design, and professional village management. A fourth project is a joint venture with Capitol Hills Golf, to develop a 150-hectare golf resort estate in Macabud, Montalban.
While Alfred takes great pride in what the company has accomplished in a relatively short time, and bright prospects for the future, it’s the corporate culture at Landco that he finds most gratifying. "We have built a company where honesty and transparency are apparent in every step of the building process. I believe I have created a company where people work as a team, where relationships take preference over everything else; where spiritual considerations have dominance over material ones. We foster values such as helping the communities where we are working. In the end, these are more important to us than the money we make," he said.