Philacre to push for global promotion of local projects

CEBU, Philippines – Hoping to create a “push” that will help the country’s real estate industry become the prime mover of the economy, Philippine Allied Chamber of Real Estate Brokers and Licensed Salesmen (Philacre) eyes to embark on international promotion of local real estate projects and tap into the huge Filipino markets based abroad.

Philacre president Anthony Leuterio said that the negative impacts of the global economic recession is undeniable and it has been creating a slowdown in the industry as more people are hesitant to spend on properties especially that the industry has caused the downfall of the US economy.

“We have to bring back the confidence of the market to real estate business. The key here is to promote to Filipinos all over the world the real estate projects that they can invest in here in the country. Its time they think about the country’s economy before they rush on investing in properties in the US which is now at its lowest,” said Leuterio.

He said that the real estate industry has a huge impact to the economy accounting for a huge slab of the country’s annual income.

“Although there are no available statistics yet but the slowdown of real estate is worldwide and news is not good so most stakeholders in the sector are not expecting to hit targets,” he said.

He said that if before they are able to hit 20 units for a certain project, now 10 units are just sold because of factors such as the economic condition, poor marketing exposures of a certain project, bad commission schemes and the wrong project location which makes it difficult to market.

Leuterio said that right now Chinese investors are looking at investing in real estate because they have huge surplus of money and most are eyeing to buy properties in the US.

“We should convince this prospective market to pour in their real estate investments here instead because projects here are positioned strategically and price-wise, it’s even more competitive. There is no reason for them not to invest here in the country because we have a lot to offer,” he added.

Leuterio said that the slowdown of the real estate industry has started since the last quarter of 2008 and the slowdown has so far ranged from 10 to 50 percent in terms of sales.

“At this point, if we look at it in a per quarter basis, the slowdown might even be worse because there is no stimulus and people are waiting and keeping their money,” said Leuterio.

He said that their organization will push for real estate to become the major economic driver of the country.

“We should benchmark real estate as the major economic driver of the country. The manufacturing sector is owned mostly by foreigners but the real estate industry is 100 percent Filipino owned,” he said.

To do this, Philacre will be doing international promotions of our local real estate products and this coming August members are going to participate in the Philippine Fiesta in America, an expo to be held in New Jersey eyed to be a good venue to market local projects and do networking with Filipino real estate practitioners based in the US.

“We will certainly do promotions as a group. Despite our infancy we are confident of what we can as a group to bring back the market’s confidence to the sector and help the industry revive back its heydays,” said Leuterio.