ILOILO CITY (PNA) - Housing developers are finding it more viable to invest in Western Visayas as reflected in the nine-year period accomplishment report submitted by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) to the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) here.
The accomplishment report showed an increasing trend as far as the availability of subdivision lots is concerned.
During the said period, the HLURB issued 4,383 certificates of registration and 4,016 licenses to sell to various developers in Western Visayas.
HUDCC Regional Coordinator Eva Marfil said that based on figures, developers are doing well in economic housing projects as shown by the number of lots made available.
From 2000 to 2009, some 42,726 subdivision lots under the economic housing category were established. The ceiling price for this category is from over P400,000 to some P2 million.
The year 2007 proved to be a very good year for economic housing with some 7,503 subdivision lots in this housing category developed. Such activity dropped to 4,956 in 2008 and picked up again in 2009 with 5,288 subdivision lots.
Meanwhile, some 27,268 socialized housing lots were made available under the nine-year period in the region.
Marfil explained that this took place because although the law mandates that 20 percent of housing development should be for socialized housing, developers continue to have options to establish such projects outside of areas where economic housing projects are being developed.
"They can justify it with the HLURB and they will be allowed to locate their 20 percent socialized housing counterpart somewhere else," she said.
A socialized housing unit costs not more than P400,000, she added.
Another category is the open market where "sky is the limit" when it comes to prices. For the same aforementioned nine-year period, some 46,902 lots in the open market housing category were made available by developers.
However, there was a drop in the number of available lots made available in 2004. During that year, only 3,169 lots were developed as compared with 7,768 the previous year.
In 2008, lots made available in the category totaled 2,041. This number rose to 9,266 in 2009.
