DAVAO CITY—The country’s major property developers are swarming into Mindanao’s still largely untapped housing sector during the past six months.
The island’s major cities are expected to see new and additional residential enclaves within the next two years. The Vista Land, for instance, said it has firmed up plans to build two more Camella residences here and in Davao del Norte’s capital of Tagum City to stay up front in what it sees as an increasingly tough properties market competition ahead.
Din Buenviaje, account manager assigned to the advance Vista Land marketing team doing a study of the Davao City market, said a Camella vertical-residences project will rise up near the airport here and a horizontal, or subdivision-type Lumina Homes would be built near its Camella subdivision in Mintal, 15 kilometers south of downtown.The Villar-owned company would also construct a second Camella subdivision residences near Apokon, Tagum del Norte, 60 kilometers north of here.
A Camella home unit fetches a price range of P4 million to P10 million, while the Lumina residence, its low-cost housing project, is between P400,000 to P800,000. Aside from its existing Mintal Camella subdivision, it owns the condominium Camella homes at Northpoint along Bajada here.
Buenviaje said the bulk of their projects are concentrated in Cagayan de Oro City in Northern Mindanao, “because it has become a melting pot in the northern part of Mindanao.” It has also projects in General Santos City. Most projects outside Metro Manila are Camella Residences and Lumina Homes, while its high-end projects in the Brittany and Crown Asia are still in the Metro Manila area, and one high-rise Crown Asia building in Cebu City.
A unit at the Brittany residences costs between P60 million and P70 million, and its Crown Asia units fetch a price of P4 million to P25 million. Buenviaje said not only Vista Land is into an aggressive project construction in this city and other cities in Mindanao. “All the country’s big property developers are already here and building their own projects.”
He said the competition is already driving up property prices here, as the Philippines posted a 7.3- percent growth in real estate.
