Pag-IBIG Fund aims to lower national housing backlog

Banking & Finance

Written by Dennis D. Estopace / Reporter

Sunday, 09 May 2010 20:09

THE government has an ambitious target of bringing down by 87,000 units the 3.5-million housing backlog this year, the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) said. Pag-IBIG chief executive Jaime A. Fabiaña said backlog could have been reduced more if the Land Registration Authority (LRA) had been computerized in the past, like it is now. The $82-million computerized land-titling system links the LRA Central Registry of Deeds to registries of deeds nationally. “These could have delivered our increase in Q1[first quarter] this year.”   He said the number of Pag-IBIG housing loans in the first quarter grew only 6 percent compared with 10 percent last year. The full-year lending was up to 45.6 billion from 34 billion, more or less 32 percent, he said, but it still made Pag-IBIG the biggest lender in the housing sector. Fabiaña said the increased uptake was a result of interest rates dropping from 12 percent in 2001 to 6 percent today, and this has also made it attractive for families of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to tap Pag-IBIG for their investments. Coupled with an increase in their purchasing power, OFWs, according to Fabiaña, were also able to afford an average mortgage of P780,000, higher than the corporate average of P610,000.  He also credited the fund’s new policy of buy-back guarantees of developers where the developers would buy back housing loans that sour, cleaning up Pag-IBIG’s bad loan stable.