Building a house is economical than renting one that is why in Davao City a lot of people came to build their homes and that made Pag-IBIG Fund Davao branch raked in about a billion pesos under its end-user financing for housing projects as of November 2007 making the Southern Mindanao Group achieved 116 percent performance for its housing services.
Pag-IBIG Fund vice president Jose W. Banzon, Jr. said that most of the homebuyers from the other parts of Mindanao chose Davao City to locate their residence or second home.
He said that as far as his group’s performance is concerned, they surpassed their target by hitting 116 percent or about P1.454 billion which were spent to fund some 3,797 units as against the 2007 target of only P1.258 billion.
Banzon said that Davao City (to include Davao del Sur area) was able to deliver some 2,079 units valued at P957,175,000; General Santos City (and Souith Cotabato) with 795 units with cost at P265,317,000; Tagum (including Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley Provinces) had 715 units with P165,598, 000 funding and Cotabato (to include Maguindanao, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Cotabato City) had 208 with P66,664, 000.
Banzon attributed the increase in housing availment to their new scheme where interest rates were brought down making housing units affordable to homebuyers.
He however observed that homebuyers in Davao City are mostly families sending their children in colleges and universities.
“I think this is the wisest decision they make because it is more advantageous nowadays to buy one than rent a house where the amortization is much lower than renting a house,” he said.
For a P300,000 house and lot package one would only get an interest rate of 6 percent or an amortization of about P1,800. Before the same package was charged 9 percent interest rate and the monthly amortization of P2,700.
Banzon said their housing performance as of November last year was their biggest although he said that they could not still pinpoint whether there is a boom in the real property.
Housing, he said follows a five year cycle and inorder to check whether there is a steady rise in the demand, the entire cycle has to be looked at.
Meanwhile, he said they are tasked this year to deliver 5,593 housing units with loan portfolio valued at P1,856,556,000.
He said they need to work hard on their target even as he said that there are good developers that that handle housing projects.
He also said that these developers availed of the development loan with repayment rates of 97 percent.
