AboitizLand deems global Pinoys as real estate driver

By Ehda M. Dagooc Updated February 02, 2009 12:00 AM

Despite massive lay offs happening in other parts of the world, which may affect some of the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), real estate developer AboitizLand Inc. expressed sustained confidence over the Filipino global community as sales driver for real estate products in the Philippines.

AboitizLand president and chief operating officer (COO) Andoni Aboitiz deemed the current economic turmoil as "temporary" and that Filipinos working abroad will always have the appetite to invest on properties.

About fifty-percent of AboitizLand's clients for its residential projects are overseas-based Filipinos. Amid the threatening economic situation, Aboitiz keeps his positive outlook that real estate take-up will continue to grow this year.

"We hope that 2009 will just be a bump on the road. At this point, we don't really know how the global financial crisis and displacement of OFWs will affect us," Aboitiz said.

Aboitiz mentioned that the year 2008, was the "best real estate year" for AboitizLand with 50 percent of the sales coming from OFWs and from overseas Filipinos.

However, Aboitiz has not discounted the effect on economic crisis on the real estate business saying, "there will be an effect but hopefully, not a dramatic one. Although we take it one year at a time, we always look at things in the long term basis."

"Real estate, by nature, is a boom and bust industry. Our plan is not to enjoy the boom nor suffer the bust; we want to be as steady and stable as possible," he added.

Luckily, he said AboitizLand's buyers are not speculative, since its projects are targeted to end-users. About 80 percent to 90 percent of AboitizLand's buyers are long-term investors, or the real end users, not the buyers that largely speculate and buy properties only for investment purposes.

As early as now, Aboitiz revealed AboitizLand is already in the planning stage for developments they hope to put up in the next three years.

Currently the company is constructing iMEZ, a five-story building designed for business process outsourcing (BPO) locators, located at the 1.8-hectare expansion area of the Pueblo Verde commercial center fronting the Mactan Economic Zone (MEZ-2) in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu.

Aboitiz said the company remains bullish in its outlook for Cebu's BPO industry despite conflicting forecasts of the sector.

"Our judgment call is that the BPO is a long-term business. There may be hitches and bumps in the coming months but we have a lot of confidence in the long-term viability and stability of the BPO," Aboitiz said.

Last year, AboitizLand spent P2.3 billion in real estate projects in Cebu, providing new residential and commercial facilities.

The largest capital expenditure of the company was the development of its Urban Village development called "Persimmon", of which P2 billion is going to be spent for the full completion of the project.

The iMEZ project on the other hand, incurred the company at least P160 million for the building construction alone.

Also, AboitizLand opened its phase-2 development of the chic residential project in the Southern part of Metro Cebu called Kishanta. The company invested an estimated P150 million for the horizontal development of Kishanta subdivision expansion.