Real estate properties in Mindanao soar

July 23, 2018

DAVAO CITY – Real estate properties are priced five-fold higher before President Rodrigo Duterte was elected into Malacanang, the Chamber of Real Estate Brokers Association (Creba) said Monday.

“What used to be P15,000 per square meter before is now 500 percent higher now and that you would find across cities in Mindanao,” said Ma. Lourdes Montemayor, Creba national chairman.

Some properties may even be much higher according to location and the intensity of the economic activities, she added.

Monteverde said Mindanao has found its own worth as a valuable market for major operations, from agriculture and education, to tourism and manufacturing.

“The president has always been Davao City, and as of the trend by now, Mindanao’s biggest drawer of business and investments,” she said.

“Sectors in the business and investment communities are now seeing differently the changes taking place in Mindanao and the increasing potential of the island as a huge market,” said Montemayor.

A steady increase in prices of land in Davao City is felt in key cities like Cagayan de Oro, Cotabato, Zamboanga and Butuan. But provincial capitals and smaller cities have not be spared of the search for lands by corporations.

“They are all over in Kidapawan, Koronadal, Butuan, Surigao, in the Zamboanga Peninsula, and in these areas there are a lot of land banking going on,” she said.

Yet, in the main cities, “it’s not land banking anymore because they can not afford those land priced 500 percent higher”.

At the third campus of a Jesuit-ran university in Bangkal, some seven kilometers west of downtown, the price of land around it was going at P100,000 per square meter. “You can not even question it because then, brokers and sellers would tell you that for the same location in Cebu (it) would already fetch P140,000 and P1 million in Manila.”

“Business and investors are looking at why people in Mindanao seems to be not bothered about all those warnings and criticism about Martial Law in Mindanao, and why Mindanawons seems to be most comfortable instead,” she said. “You know investors go into areas that they are assured of the peace and security of their investments.”

The scramble for land is mostly for all forms of intention and business operations. “For industries, for commercial and residential, but actually they all complement each other. When you operate industries, you need to accommodate your people nearby”.

In July, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) has asked local governments to start allocating portion of their localities for an economic zone as foreigners have been increasing their inquiries for Peza-accredited land across Mindanao, Monteverde said.

Peza and the Creba have started discussions with government how to speed up freeing more land for corporate and manufacturing needs, she said.

The two organizations were looking into the big spaces that were being allocated already to ancestral domain and government properties.

“Philippines has become attractive for foreign investors especially among the Chinese, or corporations operating in China,” said Arturo Milan, president of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc.

One European manufacturer operating in Guangzou, China has indicated interest in relocating its operation here, Milan said.

The upside for the city was its steady and reliable power, an English-speaking and a better skilled work force. “The downside however, is the lack of land for a manufacturing operation in Davao City and a Peza-accredited land because foreigners are hindered on fully owning its company here, and therefore it has to find a local partner on a mandated 60 percent-40-percent ownership in favor of a Filipino partner.”

“Therefore, a Peza-accredited area would be the best option for a foreign company,” he said. DMS