Vista Land aim to reach low-cost segment will help housing backlog: consultant

Villar-led Vista Land & Landscapes Inc. will continue to focus on growing its affordable and low-cost housing segment coupled with commercial developments in the next five years—a move that is seen to address the country's huge housing backlog, according to a real estate analyst.

The bulk of sales will cover the low-cost housing segment, CEO Paolo Villar said in a briefing in Makati City Tuesday.

"That's really the origins of this group. We've been having good financial results just selling houses in that segment," he said.

We're expecting to grow in our five-year pattern as we have quite a large pipeline for our sales and the economy is doing okay," he said.

Outisde NCR

Given the rising prices of land in Metro Manila, the only way to answer the country's huge housing backlog is to go out of the capital, real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle's head of research, consulting and valuation Claro Cordero, Jr. said in a phone interview.

"As of the third quarter of 2013, the country has a backlog of 3.6 million [units]," he said.

In Metro Manila, Claro said the middle income and high-income segments are already well-served by top condo developers.

"The only way that will be profitable for the developer and affordable for the customers is to develop outside of Metro Manila. And Vista Land has that landbank," he added.

The company plans to launch P28-billion worth of residential projects this year, two-thirds of which are mostly under the Camella and Lumina brands.

The Camella brand offers houses below the P4-million tag price while the Lumina brand offers an average price of P1.5 million to P2 million for units.

JLL's Claro said Vista Land is one of the pioneers in the horizontal segment.

"The Camella brand has been there of 20 years and it is one of the company's major strengths," he said.

With an aim to grow more housing projects outside Metro Manila, Vista Land also aims to increase its retail component to service the needs of its home buyers.

"There's more of a trend towards developments that provide services or commercial facilities and that's something we're trying to digress," Villar said.

For this year, the company targets a recurring income of P100 million from P60 million last year.

"It's very small, tiny portion of our revenues, that came from commercial. We just started last year. We expect to increase that a lot this year," Villar said.

As a publicly-listed company, Claro said commercial developments will be very important for Vista Land's customers and stockholders.

"Recurring or rental income has an upside, which will give value to stockholders," he said.

"It will show how the company will grow the value of the company," he added. — BM, GMA News