Condo living on the rise

With Cebu’s fast-paced development, real estate developers have seen huge growth potential for their operations especially with the high-end segment of their projects such as condominiums.

And for one is the home-grown company Commonwealth Estate, Incorporated, one of the leaders in Cebu’s real estate sector. After seeing the positive reception of the Cebuano market to their two existing condominium projects: East Aurora and North Singzon Flats, Commonwealth will soon be launching their newest mid-rise residential condominium project called as Woodcrest Residences to be built in Guadalupe, the most desired residential destination in town.

The project they said is set to provide its dwellers with cosmopolitan lifestyle. With selling prices starting at less than a million, Woodcrest Residences is said to be the “least priced fully furnished, amenities-filled residential condominium” in the market today.

“We want to make condo living a new way of life in Cebu, not just for the rich but also for the hardworking Cebuano,” stressed Commonwealth Estate Managing Director Stephen Liu in a recent press briefing.

Since condo living provides safety and security to its residents with a minimal requirement for housekeeping plus the fact that it provides lifestyle alternatives and other amenities, Commonwealth believes that condominiums are now a more advantageous investment especially for the transients and those residents who are looking for strategic locations nearby their workplace and other important destinations around town.

“Cebu has adopted a new lifestyle trend and this triggered the growth of condominiums. With this fast-paced lifestyle shift, condominiums now pose several advantages to consumers,” said Liu.

In terms of market size, Commonwealth discussed that condo living caters to a widely segmented market categorized into four major group that have spurred the growth of this industry sector. This group includes foreigners which statistics for arrivals shown to have grown these years and wide segment of this group are composed of retirees and expats. 

Another are the overseas Filipino workers (OFW) boomers, which has since been fueling the growth of the economy with remittances that have reached to P13 billion to P15 billion which has contributed to the full boom of the real estate sector in the last five years.

The third group is the BPO boomers and these are executives of business process outsourcing companies (BPOs) that have expanded operation in Cebu. Since Cebu has been regarded as the fourth top BPO destination in the world, an increase of this particular segment has also been noted.

The last one are the transient and the second home buyers which are composed of regional and local businessmen who goes in and out of Cebu for transactions, executives, doctors and lawyers an downsized families whose family members have migrated abroad.

“The booming economies of neighboring islands such as in Mindanao is also driving Cebu’s real estate growth so there is a really big potential for the market to go into condo living,” said Liu.

Woodcrest Residences will be launched on the end of May and Commonwealth is bent to develop more suburban areas for their condominium and subdivision developments in the southern and the northern part of the province as they are targeting to build close to a thousand units a year.