Small developers seek higher price ceilings

CEBU, Philippines — Low cost housing developers are appealing to the government to consider increasing the required price ceilings for socialized homes to encourage developers to build more affordable houses for Filipinos.

This developed following the newly released memorandum circular of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) increasing the minimum standard requirement for socialized housing projects to make it more liveable.

“Unless the price ceilings are reconsidered, it will hurt and considerably slow down the collective housing production momentum,” said Organization of Socialized and Economic Housing Developers of the Philippines Inc., (OSHDP) president Marcelino Mendoza.

Mendoza said the group is calling on the government to reconsider as the new rule will affect the businesses of builders.

HLURB, he said failed to factor in the costs interest rate adjustment, rising inflation, increasing construction material prices, because of the TRAIN law, including the increase in minimum floor area of units in the new price ceiling intended for the low-income market.

From a price ceiling of P450,000 for an 18-square meter (sq.m) floor area in the last four years, this year HUDCC made it at 24 sq.m floor area at P480,000.

Mendoza said the group is strongly opposing the new measure saying that this would hurt the production of affordable housing.

A record from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that construction material wholesale price index and the consumer price index, from December 2013 to April 2018, the price of socialized housing should have been raised by either 16 percent or 13 percent.

He said the group is willing to partner with the government’s thrust in providing in-expensive but “liveable” houses to more Filipinos, however, if their voices are not also heard it might worsen the problem of housing backlog.

Mendoza added that the newly-adjusted price ceiling of P480,000 for horizontal housing, with a minimum floor area of 24 sqm., even decreases the cost per square meter down to P20,000, even twenty percent lower than the price ceiling set in 2013, or almost five years since the last ceiling was adjusted. (FREEMAN)